While I was tooling around the Quad Cities last weekend I heard a story while listening to NPR that I thought I’d pass along. I’ll see if I can dig up the audio so you can listen for yourself.
The story was about the ordeal a woman went through to escape from hurricane-stricken New Orleans with her 24 year old son, wheelchair-bound due to muscular dystrophy. The key problem was that none of the rescuers were equipped to handle wheelchairs and the woman was reluctant to abandon the $20,000+ wheelchair. This isn’t quite as frivolous as it may seem at first blush. Such wheelchairs are custom-made and may make the difference between a life that’s just barely tolerable and death for someone who’s severely afflicted.
The woman had no family or friends in New Orleans and was without resources.
They finally escaped. But NPR did a pretty good job of burying the lede: the woman did have family that was capable of helping in New Jersey. They were living in New Orleans because the cost of living was cheaper there and Louisiana Medicaid was substantially more generous than New Jersey Medicaid.
I haven’t verified the differences between Louisiana Medicaid and New Jersey Medicaid and, as I say, this information was really buried in the story—it only emerged in a quote from the woman’s New Jersey daughter. But is one of the reasons that New Orleans had so many poor people due to rent-seeking?
