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ACT UP disrupts Corbett speech, protests welfare cuts
ACT UP members disrupted Gov. Corbett's speech at Liberty Bell, demanding that General Assistance welfare to poor and disabled be restored, Medicaid expanded.
ACT UP disrupts Corbett speech, protests welfare cuts
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The AIDS advocacy group ACT UP Philadelphia disrupted a Liberty Bell speech by Gov. Tom Corbett today, according to activists. (It doesn't appear as though Corbett's visit was much publicized in advance. He is usually greeted by protesters whenever he visits the city.) The group is demanding that Corbett restore General Assistance cash welfare to the state's poor and disabled. In November, Project HOME told City Paper that they had seen an influx of people requiring shelter, food and services since Corbett and legislative Republicans cut the $205 per month benefit.
In March, CP profiled the city's recovery houses for recovering drug addicts, which heavily depended on General Assistance checks.
ACT UP is also calling for Corbett to accept Obamacare's vast expansion of Medicaid coverage in the state which, though primarily covered by the federal government, conservatives criticize for potentially costing Pennsylvania taxpayers down the line. Earlier this month, however, the Pennsylvania Health Law Project released a report contending that the program would most likely pay for itself through offsetting payments to other state programs and generating new tax revenue.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding most of the Affordable Care Act struck down a provision requiring state's to expand Medicaid coverage. The governor faces strong pressure not only from healthcare advocates, but also from hospitals who will depend on government insurance of the 613,000 uninsured adults as a cushion against the law's costs. Corbett last year announced that Pennsylvania will not set up an insurance exchange, a much lower stakes rejection of Obamacare since the federal government will simply set one up instead.
Photos by Kaytee Riek
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AT LIBERTY BELL CEREMONY, ACT UP PHILLY INVOKES DR. KING’S LEGACY, PROTESTS CORBETT’S POLICIES THAT HURT PHILADELPHIANS
Activists call on Corbett to restore General Assistance benefits and expand Medicaid eligibility
PHILADELPHIA- Governor Tom Corbett received an unexpected earful during a bell-tapping ceremony at the Liberty Bell on Sunday. A group of protesters from ACT UP Philadelphia—a local AIDS activist group that is commemorating its 25th anniversary this year—held signs highlighting the difference between King’s advocacy for economic rights and the Governor’s policies that directly undermine those rights. The group demanded that Governor Corbett reinstate the General Assistance benefits his administration eliminated for 70,000 people statewide in August 2012. ACT UP also demanded Corbett allow the expansion of Medicaid eligibility to 600,000 low-income Pennsylvanians as planned in the Affordable Care Act signed into law in 2010.
“Corbett’s presence at this event, in a crass attempt to tack his name onto the powerful history of Dr. King, is the epitome of hypocrisy. When Governor Corbett cuts General Assistance and denies health insurance to the poor, he works directly against King’s vision,” said Jose de Marco of ACT UP Philadelphia. The group members include people living with HIV who lost GA benefits last year, who explain that they now struggle to pay rent; one is now facing eviction from his apartment as a direct result of Corbett’s GA cuts.
The General Assistance (GA) program was a meager, often temporary program of last-resort ($205/month in most counties) for Pennsylvanians without children who were sick or disabled, domestic violence survivors fleeing abuse, and individuals in alcohol and drug treatment programs. Often GA served as a loan program for individuals waiting for the Social Security Administration to consider disability claims; the state was reimbursed when these applications were approved. During these depths of winter, ACT UP members say the end of GA can be expected to exacerbate homelessness among the chronically ill and disabled. Even more people will turned away from homeless shelters already filled to capacity. And without GA as a safety net, battered women may feel compelled to remain with abusive partners.
Also among the group were medical students who said that the Governor’s unwillingness to commit to Medicaid eligibility expansion to poor Pennsylvanians was placing their patients in peril. As other states, including four with Republican governors, have agreed to expand eligibility as laid out in the Act, Governor Corbett continues his threats to block the expansion of Medicaid eligibility.
The expansion, funded almost entirely by the federal government, would expand Medicaid eligibility thresholds from $5,138/year to $14,404/year for single adults in Pennsylvania. Refusing to accept federal Medicaid dollars could effectively lock poor patients out of healthcare because the Affordable Care Act shifts funds previously used to compensate hospitals for care of the uninsured into Medicaid. If Governor Corbett does not accept federal dollars for Medicaid expansion, hospitals across the state would receive no compensation for the care of many uninsured patients. In the last month, Governor Corbett has stated that he doubts the state treasury has the funds to go along with Medicaid expansion, though independent groups estimate that the expansion would require only a 2% increase in state spending on Medicaid over the next 10 years.
During the year prior to his assassination in 1968, Dr. King devoted almost all of his efforts to the Poor People’s Campaign, a nationwide organizing effort in support of an economic bill of rights including the right to and “a meaningful job at a living wage” and “a secure and adequate income” for those who could not work. He also declared, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is most shocking and inhumane.”
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