News from the South - Missouri News Feed

Turns out, Medicaid was for us

Published

2 months ago

July 8, 2025

missouriindependent.com – Keith Runyon – 2025-07-08 05:55:00

by Keith Runyon, Missouri Independent
July 8, 2025

The front-page headlines in the last few days have been jarring: “Medicaid Cuts May Force Retirees out of Nursing Homes.”

While much of the battle over Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill for billionaires is theoretical to many of us who’ve always had health insurance and coverage for things like rehab and even nursing homes, this information hit home for me.

In 1999, over Labor Day weekend, my mother had a paralytic stroke that left her entire right side lifeless. Although her mind was unimpaired, most of what she cared about in life was deeply affected. Since early childhood she had been a pianist, eventually a very fine one trained at the University of Louisville. Her days at the keyboard were ended. So was her ability to walk, to take care of basic chores, even to bathe. So was her ability to spend time with her grandchildren, and to entertain the family for holidays.

Yet her heart, at age 75, was still strong and her will to live was, at least for a time, unflinching. But within six months or so, after long treatment in a rehab center, Medicare required that she go home or go on full pay.

My parents lived the American dream in the postwar era. They were comfortably off, owned their own home, and educated their two sons — with no student loans. But even in 1999, they couldn’t afford, for very long, the steep prices that nursing homes charged. So Mother came home in a wheelchair, where she remained under my aged father’s care until he could bear it no longer. The family housekeeper, who had cared for my grandmother until she died, was as old as Mother, so she wasn’t up to the task either.

One night in April 2000 the call came from my brother that my father was so ill that he was unable to rise from the living room sofa. Within an hour, he was in an emergency room, dying of congestive heart failure.

He was brought back to life by one of Louisville’s great cardiac surgeons, Morris Weiss, but for the rest of his life he was frail and dependent on medicine, walked with a cane, and was unable to take my mother back home. Alas, nursing home care was the only option for her,

My father was always very private about his finances, so I never quite knew when, but his savings (and Mother’s) dried up and she was transferred to Medicaid. He was even reluctant to speak of it. We all thought Medicaid was for indigents, or the terribly disabled.

Turns out, Medicaid was for us. I learned that a lot of nursing homes welcomed Medicaid residents. An attorney who specialized in issues involving the aged advised our family. Then an elderly aunt died and left Mother some money. Immediately she went back onto private pay until those dollars were gobbled up. So back on Medicaid she went.

Meanwhile Daddy sold our family home, which gave him some money for emergencies but very few pleasures. He moved into a nice senior citizens’ complex, designed for independent living, with group meals and activities. He made friends and played cards and was close enough to Mother’s nursing home to pay daily visits. Then, his health began to fail.

For a time there was a very real prospect that both of them would be in nursing homes at the same time. Then, in the spring of 2008, each began a further decline. Mother decided that enough was enough. She told me and my Aunt Rose, “I want to die.” And so she did, by declining food and medication. She ended her days in a palliative care unit in St. Matthews, only a few blocks from where she had lived the happiest days of her life. In retrospect, I think she died of a broken heart.

A month later, her older sister Lucille died at the ripe old age of 91, in her own home surrounded by loved ones. And then, just after July 4, my father joined them, passing from life in the very same corridor as my mother, attended by the same nurses. It was a blessing.

It is too painful for me to imagine what would have happened if Mother had been thrown out of the nursing home for inability to pay. “Tax reform” – Donald Trump-style – might well make that happen. It is despicable legislation, the product of a time when lowering taxes for the rich “trumps” caring for the people who made this country great through hard work and patriotism. I don’t think my father went to fight in World War II to save a nation where the super-rich call the shots.

If this is a “big, beautiful bill” in the eyes of some, to me, it is a cancer in the American soul.

This article was originally published by Kentucky Lantern, a part of States Newsroom.

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.

The post Turns out, Medicaid was for us appeared first on missouriindependent.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning

This article presents a clear ideological perspective critical of recent tax legislation associated with Donald Trump, framing it as harmful to vulnerable populations reliant on Medicaid, such as retirees in nursing homes. The personal narrative humanizes the impact of Medicaid cuts, emphasizing the struggles of ordinary Americans and portraying the tax reforms as favoring the wealthy at the expense of the working and retired class. The tone and language express a moral judgment against the policy, aligning with a viewpoint that supports robust social safety nets and critiques policies perceived to reduce support for those in need.

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News from the South - Missouri News Feed

Six officers awarded for investigating Border Patrol murder plot, violent gun crime

Published

2 days ago

August 22, 2025

Staff Editor

www.ozarksfirst.com – Drew Tasset – 2025-08-22 15:40:00

SUMMARY:

Six local and federal law enforcement officers received the 2025 Guardian of Justice Award for their roles in investigating a conspiracy to murder border patrol agents and violent gun crimes in Springfield. FBI Special Agent Isaac McPheeters led the investigation into Bryan Parry and Jonathan O’Dell, co-founders of the “2nd American Militia,” who planned to kill border agents and immigrants. O’Dell escaped jail in 2023 but was recaptured within 48 hours. Additionally, ATF Special Agent Jerry Wine and local officers investigated a series of shootings linked to gangs “F**k The Opps” and “Only Da Brothers,” resulting in multiple indictments and prison sentences, reducing Greene County shootings.

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The post Six officers awarded for investigating Border Patrol murder plot, violent gun crime appeared first on www.ozarksfirst.com

News from the South - Missouri News Feed

Why a river is hidden in tunnels under St. Louis

Published

2 days ago

August 22, 2025

Staff Editor

fox2now.com – Megan Mueller – 2025-08-22 09:00:00

SUMMARY: Beneath St. Louis’s Forest Park lies a critical wastewater tunnel system connected to the River Des Peres, which runs over four miles under the city. Created in the 1890s, the river originally carried untreated wastewater, causing unpleasant conditions by the early 1900s. A combined sewer system channels both stormwater and wastewater through these tunnels to the Lemay Wastewater Treatment Plant. The complex network, recognized as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, was built using manual labor and early technology. Ongoing maintenance ensures structural integrity, and a new 15- to 16-mile tunnel system, planned for completion in the late 2030s, will increase capacity by 300 million gallons. Residents are warned to avoid the hazardous tunnels and river waters.

Read the full article

The post Why a river is hidden in tunnels under St. Louis appeared first on fox2now.com

News from the South - Missouri News Feed

Missouri settles lawsuit over prison isolation policies for people with HIV

Published

2 days ago

August 22, 2025

Staff Editor

missouriindependent.com – Rudi Keller – 2025-08-22 06:00:00

by Rudi Keller, Missouri Independent
August 22, 2025

For six years, Honesty Jade Bishop was held in solitary confinement in a Missouri prison after she was sexually assaulted by her cellmate.

The Department of Corrections deemed that Bishop, a transgender woman who was living with HIV, was sexually active and needed to be isolated. And from 2015 to 2021, she was in administrative segregation at the Jefferson City Correctional Center, a prison that houses men.

A federal lawsuit filed on Bishop’s behalf in 2023 after her parole says her prolonged time in solitary confinement caused “depression, hopelessness, severe anxiety and feeling as if she were going insane and reaching a mental breaking point.” It also, the lawsuit says, drove her to “physically self-harm including attempts to take her own life.”

On Wednesday, the department agreed to a settlement, setting new policies and training requirements. But Bishop died before the settlement could be reached, taking her own life in October 2024.

“My sister, Honesty, was a fighter who never gave up,” Latasha Monroe, Bishop’s sister, said in a news release from the MacArthur Justice Center Thursday. “She endured years of cruel treatment because of her HIV status, but she never stopped believing that things could change. This settlement honors her memory and ensures that others won’t have to suffer what Honesty went through. Her courage in speaking out has created lasting changes.”

Monroe continued the lawsuit on behalf of her sister’s estate. There was a monetary award in addition to the policy and training changes, but the amount has not been released.

Lambda Legal and law firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon also participated with MacArthur Justice Center in representing Bishop.

Shubra Ohri, senior counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center, said she first met Bishop soon after she was released from isolation and got to know well after her parole.

“She was a bright person who had to cope with a really torturous experience, basically,” Ohri said. “And you know, despite being bright and despite being hopeful and really productive, I could tell she was struggling with things.”

Bishop was in prison after being sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2014, according to a report on the settlement prepared by Midwest Newsroom and The Marshall Project. During a scuffle with police as they tried to arrest her in 2011 for a misdemeanor stealing charge, Bishop bit an officer and was charged with assaulting an officer and recklessly risking an HIV infection.

Bishop began transitioning after arriving at Jefferson City Correctional Center. During her time in isolation, Ohri said, “she was denied, like a lot of things, that would help affirm her identity as a transgender woman, which really had an amplified impact on her mental health.”

At the time of the assault, and until the settlement, the department policy was to place anyone with HIV into isolation if they were deemed sexually active, Ohri said in an interview Thursday with The Independent.

“It was very, very obviously an unconstitutional policy,” she said.

The Midwest Newsroom/Marshall Project report states that, as of January 2025, there were 218 people with HIV incarcerated in Missouri.

Karen Pojmann, spokeswoman for the state department of corrections, did not respond to a request for comment on the settlement.

Going forward, any incarcerated person with a communicable disease will be evaluated individually to determine if they need to be in administrative segregation to prevent the infection from spreading, according to the settlement

“This settlement represents a critical victory in our ongoing fight against HIV criminalization and discrimination,” Jose Abrigo, Lambda Legal HIV Project director, said in the news release. “For too long, correctional systems across the country have subjected people living with HIV to punitive and medically unjustified isolation based on outdated stigma rather than modern science.”

HIV can be controlled with medication to the point that the virus is not transmissible. Part of the settlement mandates new training for corrections officers on HIV transmissibility, as well as the law on disability-based discrimination, Ohri said.

“The hope is that combined, the policy change and the training,” Ohri said, “would really drive home that what happened to Honesty, putting someone in segregation who may have HIV, but was on medication, that there’s no reason for it.”

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Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content highlights issues related to the treatment of marginalized groups, such as transgender individuals and people living with HIV, within the prison system. It emphasizes systemic injustices, advocates for policy reform, and supports civil rights organizations involved in legal advocacy. The focus on social justice, healthcare rights, and institutional accountability aligns with center-left perspectives that prioritize equity and reform within existing structures.