Are Firefighters People?

 Firefighters are about to become the most important public employees in the country, if they haven't already. We would be smart to take extra-good care of them.

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

As brutal wildfires spread in Colorado, federal fighters, along with state and local first responders, are doing everything they can to deal with the disaster.

But Sarah Kliff noted a detail yesterday that I did not know: thousands of federal firefighters do not have health insurance.

SNIP

For what it's worth, the Affordable Care Act would extend health care subsidies to these firefighters -- many of whom make modest salaries between $25,000 and $35,000 a year -- making insurance affordable for them in 2014.

SNIP

Postscript: Incidentally, didn't Mitt Romney and his campaign just spend a week telling voters it's absurd of President Obama to want to hire more firefighters? Given the developments, maybe that wasn't the smartest thing Romney has ever done?

Update: John Lauer, a 27-year-old member of a Colorado-based "hotshot" crew, is one of the uninsured first responders, and he's created a petition on Change.org in support of health benefits for firefighters. As of this afternoon, it has a little over 116,000 signatures.