April 06, 2005
Storms 'n Norman
In Florida, once you’re convicted of a crime, you’re considered a second class citizen for life - not allowed to vote or hold office or even work in dozens of occupations that require a professional license, even after you’ve served your time and repaid your debt to society.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Jim Norman wants to add healthcare to the list of banned activities. Norman has proposed that the county indigent health plan be allowed to turn away anyone with three criminal convictions.
This means that a homeless person busted for trespassing for sleeping or loitering in the wrong place who has the wherewithal to seek out medical care for his tuberculan cough will be denied care. If there’s any justice in the world, that person will run into Mr. Norman at a red light and unintentionally spew mucus and sputum all over the commissioner’s suit jacket while begging for change, but we can’t count on that scenario actually coming to pass.
So, in real life, said homeless wretch will show up at an emergency room, which will be forced to bear the cost of his treatment, thus saving the county a few precious dollars.
Elsewhere on the commission, Ronda Storms feels that if she can crawl across glass on her elbows then you and I can damn well pay good money to rent second rate Hollywood movies at Blockbuster, because providing patrons a popular and well received service just isn’t what a public library is supposed to be doing.
Ronda feels that the library, rather than offering popular movies on DVD, should instead be focusing on children’s materials, including “educational” videos, because encouraging adults to use the library’s resources might just lead to clamoring for more government services like, uh, healthcare for poor people or some other such nonsense.
Posted by Norwood at April 6, 2005 05:34 AM