The Death Toll in Low Income Communities

A family’s income affects how much money they have to provide for the basic needs of daily survival: housing, food, clothes, health care, and education. The lower the income the greater the challenge to access nutritious food, good housing, and education.Higher incomes allow access to better quality housing materials that reduce the risk of contact with lead, asbestos,mold, rodents, and dust. Looking at low income communities you see just from walking into the city limit that they have no access to anything nutritious and healthy to survive in, better yet to strive from. Income can influence personal and community health, while we usually think of a disease, injury, or chemical as causing a health problem, a family income can indirectly affect their health. Employment, more education , and higher incomes are closely linked to improved health.

 Low income communities have more corporations or business that sell fast food, alcohol, cigarettes. People living in these communities are restricted to little amount of resources and have a majority of  products that cause serious health problems. Thank you Obama for stressing that Obama Care gets passed.How useful is Obama care for the poor though, did you know that it is a requirement  to purchase health care  by a specific date or you will receive a penalty tax. I find that radical because we are talking about the poor here, poor means having no sort of income better yet for food that they can afford health care. They are placed in communities that  are screaming out death, and I say this with anger because that is what I see everyday in my sight.
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       I came across an article yesterday on Huffington Post called “Millions are Realizing they are too Poor for Obama Care” the first thing that stood out to me was the story of this man stated “Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling and staunch Republican resistance, Marc Alphonse, an unemployed 40-year-old Marine veteran who is essentially homeless, cannot get health insurance under Obama Care”(2014).This man has served for his country and he as well as other low income American citizens suffer from job loss, what makes his story different is the fact that he is disabled and isn’t able to get a decent job that can help him and his family survive. I find Obama Care to be misleading because I am aware that this new law is called Affordable Care Act  but I guess the affordability part doesn’t reach the poor. This law is mostly taking effect in Florida but that is not very far from California. The effect that it has in California is that any poor person living alone is not eligible for Medicaid. Homeless families are often times to homeless to stay together. Survival strategies  prevent families from living like one big happy family. This Obama Care act is effective on those type of families because the rule that goes along with the law is, an adult without a disability who isn’t living with their children, like the veteran Alphonse whom I’ve stated previously--doesn’t qualify for Medicaid,no matter how poor he or she is.

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