Friday, November 19, 2004

Lauren Rainey Follow up story

WPMI, the Mobile area news team that first publicized the Lauren Rainey case have a follow up.
The good news is the amount of attention Lauren has been getting on worldwide. Michael Moore picked up the story following atrios. Letters have been pouring in.

The bad news is that the state government is stonewalling. Bob Riley, twit, and governor of Alabama had this to say

"Because I think to a large extent what you've done is frighten a child, sent the wrong message to the community that the state is not being as responsive as it can be because there are a variety of different programs and I think if we all had taken the opportunity to sit down and explore all the other options we wouldn't even be having this conversation."

When asked if he knew what those other programs are, the Governor responded, "No, but I can find out and let you know."

As it turns out, Lauren's family is not eligible for any other nursing care, only some housekeeping help that they don't need.

Lauren's airway needs to be suctioned several times an hour. Right now a professional nurse is on duty 10 hours a day to help with that. Without Medicaid, she will not receive the medical attention she needs.

One of Riley's predecessors said that the job of the governor of Alabama is to keep his state off the front page of the New York Times. If this keeps up, Riley will fail at that.

PS: I did a quick Google search for the quote about the governor of Alabama, but couldn't find its source. All I remember is that it was posted in the phil dept office at Auburn University, where I used to work.

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