The Medicaid Protests: Adequate And Affordable Medical Services (Essay Sample)

The Medicaid Protests
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The Medicaid Protests
Medicaid is a social health program that aims at helping people with limited resources to get adequate and affordable medical services. The people with disabilities, children, and the elderly make up the three groups that have benefited most of the social health program. During the reign of Barack Obama, former US president, the government expanded the program and increased funds for the program, reaching many people in the process. However, there have been attempts to repeal and replace the program. The people with disabilities help protests to oppose the repeal attempts as it will significantly cut the funding and make most health benefits unaffordable. Different media websites have since published articles covering the protest and the outcome.
There are differences in how the different media houses reported the protests. The articles from the mainstream media (Vox, The Independent, and Washington Post) have the arrests of the protesters as the main theme (Shugerman & Wilts, 2017; Stein, J., 2017; Stein, P., 2017). On the other hand, the New Mobility article's main theme is to save the Medicaid (Byzek, 2017). All the three articles from the mainstream media talk about the government's aim to cut the taxes of the wealthiest, by trimming the Medicaid funding (Shugerman & Wilts, 2017; Stein, J., 2017; Stein, P., 2017). This focus on money by the media houses, although seemingly positive representations, still emphasize the business model. However, the article from new mobility uses the civil rights model of representation. For example, there is a statement that says "It felt like a breakthrough to a lot of us" (Byzek, 2017). Most people with disabilities that were protesting believe the protest is the beginning of a change in the way the people with disabilities are treated. Despite the differences in how the articles represented people with disabilities, it is good to see that the media houses took the initiative to air the protest live and report on how the police handled the situation. Knowledge of the people with disabilities' plight could be a starting point in changing the society's view of them
References
Byzek, J. (2017, October 02). Disabled Americans s...