Maybe it’s not about the money after all.

To save "big money" legislative deal-makers dealt away health insurance coverage for about 20,000 of our neighbors.

Every now and then I feel compelled to do some math.

There are numbers all around us. Little numbers that we can instantly understand – like the price of a gallon of gas or a dozen eggs. And big numbers – numbers way, way beyond what we deal with at the grocery store or balancing our own checkbooks. Those big numbers, well, we usually just look at them and think how what they represent is really, really good or really, really bad – depending on how we happen to feel about what they’re really big numbers of.

These days the news is full of big numbers – usually tied to something political we’re exhorted to be in favor of or be rabidly against. And of course, those numbers usually involve money, and, taking a cue from the Menard’s Guy, politicians love to claim that what they’re gonna do is gonna “save big money.”

Keeping that in mind, earlier this week we learned that in the wee hours of Monday morning Minnesota legislators cast a vote that is gonna save Minnesota some big money -- $148 million over the next four years according to the best spreadsheet numbers they were working with.

For most of us, that sounds like good news. For the folks who’ll probably suffer and die, not so good.

You see, to save that big money legislative deal-makers dealt away health insurance coverage for about 20,000 of our neighbors.

So what does that mean? If you’ve never lived without medical insurance, let me tell you from experience: It’s sitting next to a deliriously feverish child at 3 a.m. fervently hoping the Christian Scientists got things right, because if it is meningitis all you have is Tylenol and prayer.

When people can’t afford to see the doctor, small problems become big ones. People needlessly suffer. Some will needlessly die.

All so the politicians can brag how they saved money. Money that turns out not to be so big after all…

That’s where doing the math comes in.

Take that $148 million, divide it by 20,000 people, then divide that result by four years…then to put a fine point on it, divide that yearly savings by 365. It comes out to $5.07 a day to give your neighbor and mine reasonable assurance that they can see a doctor when they’re sick or hurt. That’s less than the price of a Starbucks latte or a cold pint of your favorite brew.

$5.07 , – that’s the price the legislature has put on the life and wellbeing of 20,000 of the folks living and working in our communities.

Seems to me we should be able to afford that.

We could, if those 20,000 folks only had the proper paperwork. Legislators voting to take medical coverage away from these individuals and families justify it on the grounds of paperwork – or lack of it. According to this way of thinking a child without the proper collection of stamps, signatures and certifications is not worthy of medical attention, nor, of course, are her parents, siblings, grandparents, or anyone else improperly vetted, but otherwise adjudged biologically human. In their thinking, lack of a visa stamp trumps basic humanity.

Death by bureaucratic classification based on national origin does not speak well of us.

And to those who would point fingers and squeal, “Freeloaders!” I’d make one pointed observation – if they’re freeloaders, why does ICE focus its raids on folks working the line at the slaughterhouse, the poultry plant, the milking parlor, the roofing crew? Why are they rounded up from produce fields, restaurant kitchens, hotel laundries, nursing homes and day cares?

How is it the people legislators singled out to go without medical care are the same people we depend on to do the toughest, dirtiest, least attractive work to keep our communities going? The people who do our scutwork. The work the rest of us would really rather not do.

They claimed it was to save money…to save big money…

In that case, let’s be reminded that doing that work earns a paycheck – or cash under the table if you prefer to think of their upstanding employers as participants in tax fraud – and out of that pay they, just like you and me, pay taxes. And getting down to brass tacks, with gas tax, sales tax, property tax, income tax, and whatever hidden tax slips by unnoticed, it doesn’t take long to deposit $5.07 a day in the government’s coffers.

It sure doesn’t look like these folks will be getting what they pay for.

Maybe it’s not about the money after all.

Sometimes you just have to do the math.