Pay Check to Paycheck Documentary Extra Credit

The documentary called “Paycheck to Paycheck” is about a single mother named Katrina Gilbert, who has three young children. “Katrina Gilbert is one of the 42 million American women living near or below the poverty line. There are some 28 million children who depend on mothers like her.” Katrina is a Certified Nursing Assistant who gets paid $9.49 per hour, which is the minimum wage. Katrina was married for ten years to Jeremy Gilbert, but they split up because Jeremy was a pain pill addict and now she is forced to take care of the children on her own.

Jeremy moved in with his parents in Alabama and Katrina rents a trailer home with her three children. In order to pay for her rent, Katrina is able to make partial rent payments. Often Katrina has to drive ten hours to Alabama to drop the kids off to their father so that they can spend time together. Originally, Jeremy did not have a job, but then Jeremy found a job at a local sock mill closer to them. They swapped homes so that Jeremy could afford to live closer to them. Unfortunately, Jeremy’s job is not stable; it’s more like a part time job and most of the time he doesn’t work. Since they are closer together, Katrina is now able to work seven days per week to make ends meet. Even though she receives child-support, it is not enough, which is the case for many low income single mothers. A solution to this problem could be an increase to minimum wage.

Katrina does not to have health insurance because she cannot afford it. Sadly, I know many people with the Obamacare that still cannot afford to have health insurance or do not qualify, which is the case with Katrina, who has Graves’ disease and has been left untreated for many years. I believe that the Obamacare is a big failure; it needs to lower its prices to accommodate the low income families.

Later in the documentary, Katrina submits her income tax return and it is approved for an earned income tax credit. According to Wikipedia, “an earned income tax credit is a refundable tax credit for low to moderate income working individuals and couples—particularly those with children.” With the money she receives from her refund she decides to go to the doctor. Katrina picks and chooses which medications she can afford to take home. If she had to pay her entire medication out of pocket it would cost a total of $400 which she could not afford. In reality, many low income families are faced with this type of circumstances and there is not much that we can do unless there is change in the system.

Source: www.hbo.com

After analyzing the documentary, I believe that the problem is people getting married at a younger age, having kids, and not finishing college. I believe that more education needs to be implemented in schools and that college education is important to be successful. Of course, for the people who are stuck in this type of situation their needs to be more help so that they can live a better quality of life.

 



Poverty and Criminal Justice in the United States

Source: oneradionetwork.com

On March 18, 2014, Salon recently published an article named “10 shameful ways the United States is failing to preserve basic human rights.” The article bases its information on a new Human Rights Watch report called World Report; which evaluated countries around the world, the United States scores poorly on safeguarding the rights of its own population. In a nutshell, the article puts the top ten shameful ways the United States fails to preserve basic human rights: harsh sentencing, abysmal prison conditions, youth detention, poverty and justice, racial disparities in criminal justice, labor rights, health policy, women’s rights, national security and surveillance, and lastly rights on non-citizens. The people who are “most vulnerable in our society include racial and ethnic groups, minorities, the poor, immigrants, prisoners, and the elderly.” 

Focusing on poverty and criminal justice, it is clear that the poor are the ones who suffer the most because they cannot afford to pay high court fees and other charges such as getting an expensive lawyer to defend them in a fair trial. Also, according to the article, the poor and homeless who occupy public space are harassed and arrested by policemen. The poor are “stigmatized, scapegoated, and mistreated” by the criminal justice system. Lawyers who are overworked as public defenders do not give the poor a fair trial in court. 

According to the United States Constitution, the sixth amendment gives us the right to a fair trial, but it seems that in today’s world it is only true if you can afford to pay a good lawyer. The system should not be like this, this is a disadvantage for the low income families. One solution to the problem is to have a legislative reform or to ratify the sixth amendment and have set prices on lawyers to represent every single person equally and fairly. This would eliminate the rich having fair trials because of their money. This way everyone would be treated equally and we would be given a fair trial. Also, public defenders should have a limit to the amount of cases they can have in a given time. This would eliminate overworked schedules and they could focus on each individual case and ultimately give everyone a fair trial by law. 

The problem with poverty lies deep in our society. In a Thinkprogress article published on March 18, 2014, Republican Paul Ryan “the recent vice presidential candidate and GOP leader on budget policy, recently blamed poverty on inner city men being lazy.” It’s not the first time someone has said this type of offensive comment. Poor people are not lazy; society needs to stop stigmatizing the poor. There must be a change in the way our society thinks of the poor. Poverty is a problem that lies in the whole government system. More money should be invested in public education because children need to be given a fair opportunity to be successful. In addition, college tuitions are a major problem in this society. Many high school students who graduate never attend college because they simply cannot afford it and it is not because they are lazy. 

Health Care for All Including Illegal Immigrants

Image Source: http://www.examiner.com

On March 5, 2014, MICHELLE MALKIN published an article called Lead Story: The inevitability of
Obamacare for illegal aliens. The author’s intended audience is to inform the general public or tax payers of how in Oregon this week officials have confessed that nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants had been “accidentally” steered from the state’s low-income Medicaid program and instead were enrolled in Obamacare in violation of the law. Meaning that, “inaccurate” data was submitted and passed through government hands and now this illegal immigrants have full-service health care. Arguing that it is unfair for those millions of law-abiding American’s who have lost their   healthcare coverage and too see nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants accepted into the Obamacare is a “slap in the face.” 

The article is well written and it does focus on how the system failed miserably when it came to singing up nearly 4,000 illegal beneficiaries. It also mentions other programs such as States Children’s Health Care Insurance Program (S-CHIP) a program that currently helps undocumented children. It also points out that in California illegal immigrants qualify for medical coverage if they are not in the process of deportation. 

Another concern of the author is that the problem is still not fixed and many more illegal immigrants are still registering and becoming beneficiaries of the Obamacare illegally. The last day for anyone to sign up for Obamacare is March 31st of this month and wonders how many more illegal immigrants will continue to sign up and be “eligible for full-blown” medical coverage through the Obama Healthcare. 

Image Source: dailycaller.com

I can see how the authors claim is credible, but I do not agree that illegal immigrants should be denied access to healthcare. Clearly this was done “accidentally,” but we should think outside of the box. The bottom line is that illegal immigrants are hard working people like the rest of us in this country. Illegal immigrants do contribute to society weather you want to acknowledge that or not is up to each individual. The truth is that many illegal immigrants do in fact pay taxes without nothing in return, so why not offer them healthcare. I don’t deny that our tax money is contributed to illegal immigrants health care, but doesn’t everyone deserve a better quality of life. Lets not forget that this country is a country of immigrants denying them healthcare weakens our system even more. Or should they be left in misery and die or live in disease, but wouldn’t that affect us “legal people” in the long run? I think that having illegal immigrants pay for their insurance will decrease the burden on tax payer money that is now taken for programs such as S-CHIP or Medical Assistance Program.