Dear Editor:

From time to time in Maine I have heard the question: “What happened to the 70,000 who were denied Medicaid access to medicines?”

While I am only one person, I know of one suicide and one massive heart attack that occurred within three to four weeks when medicines were not available for two of the 70,000. Since that time, the primary way of assessing the impact of no Medicaid expansion is the rise in debt of the hospitals who must serve those needs without reimbursement.

Yesterday it struck me that individuals struggling with medical problems while incomes earned are insufficient are likely to die without public knowledge, except by the hospitals who tried to save them. Suicides and lonely deaths rarely show up in the obituaries. They simply become a recorded number for the deaths in a town or in the state of Maine.

Is that why it is so easy to withhold medical access, or food, or funds for the poor? It has been extremely difficult to understand how pride of oneself remains when we are denying others life. What is the difference between using a gun to kill or just using a human being to perform labor until their lack of medicine does the job? At one time I thought this was only happening in Cambodia, “The Killing Fields.” Today it is here in our country and in our state.

Is that the new legacy of the United States or the state of Maine? Are we the new Germany who “did not see — did not know” about the death camps? What pride is there in demeaning the poor? What honor is there in not feeding children?

What happens to the soul of the land of freedom when we fail in the basics of saving lives? When will we say “no” to ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) laws that put corporate profits ahead of human needs? “Corporate takeover of public tax dollars” has been in headlines across America. Today it is Maine as Andy O’Brien joins hundreds of reporters trying to warn about the dangers. Lives matter and denying people life saving medicine feels like cold-blooded murder, but ALEC is blinded by corporate gold. Are we also blinded?

Jarryl Larson

Edgecomb