Jackson Local Member On Need for Critical Care Funding

James Call of the Tallahassee Democrat provides an analysis of the 2022 Legislative Session finding that Florida workers, Democrats feel left behind in legislative session's 'Year of the Parent' and that the 2022 Session culture wars left "little time for sick, students and workforce housing."

Call quoted AFSCME Local 1363 Jackson member Tarsha Laster and writes:

Representatives of AFSCME, the labor union for city, county, and state workers, said the state appears to be backing off other public services, too. 

Florida is one of 12 states that have not expanded Medicaid to provide health insurance to 2.6 million non-elderly adults. 

And, the zeroing of a fund to pay for a critical care programs at so-called safety-net hospitals for the poor, according to Tarsha Laster, an endoscopic technician at Jackson Health System in Miami, comes just as procedures were coming back online after  “wave after COVID wave.”

“We were stretched to the breaking point and then some. These cuts could lead to very real and very negative impacts,” said Laster about the loss of critical care programs at 28 hospitals statewide.

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