“THE BATTLE IS FAR FROM OVER,” said Honolulu attorney Paul Alston regarding a decision allowing the state to reduce Medicaid health care benefits for migrants covered under the Compact of Free Association. COFA allows Palau, Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia citizens, including Ka`u’s Marshallese community, to live and work in the United States in exchange for U.S. control of extensive strategic land and water in the Pacific Ocean. “We’re going to take this to the end. We will not give up,” Alston said, vowing to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary, according to a story in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Alston said that if benefits are cut, migrants will be forced into very costly emergency room treatment, “and some you’re just going to kill. How crazy and how immoral is that? “We got these people in our state who are allowed by federal law to be here from birth to death and the (health care) program that the state is offering as a substitute is garbage,” Alston told reporter Kristen Consillio. “All of this was done by the Lingle administration in a callous disregard for the health needs of this population. One would hope the Abercrombie administration would take a more economically rational and compassionate view as to how we treat these people who live among us.”
Posted on: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 04:56:05 +0000
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