Letters: Deaths of uninsured on Haley’s shoulders

Our governor and the Republican majority in the Legislature have followed the party line and simplistically declared that the Affordable Care Act is “wrong for South Carolina,” without providing hard facts to back up that slogan. They have tried to block the law’s implementation by refusing to accept federal Medicaid funds.

Apparently the few hundred preventable deaths predicted in South Carolina per year is an acceptable number in taking this ideological stand. After all, it will only be a few poor people dying from medical neglect.

But the people who die because they don’t have Medicaid coverage aren’t numbers. They have names and faces. They have friends and relatives who will mourn their needless deaths and remember who was responsible. This policy of neglect, along with the continuing underfunding of services for our mentally ill citizens, is part of Nikki Haley’s legacy.

She continues to prove that she’s no ally of poor people with treatable medical conditions and that she doesn’t grasp the wisdom of the ounce of prevention equaling a pound of cure.