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I was just on a conference call where Governor Martin O’Malley (D-MD) was asked whether he thought Republican governors might opt out of the Medicaid expansion in light of the Supreme Court’s ACA ruling yesterday. He replied, “I don’t know. Some of our colleagues would like to get out of being members of the Union.” I think that’s the right way to look at it. These are an ideologically extreme set of characters, and they’re not going to go quietly, meekly accepting funds that expands health care for poor people. That goes against their worldview.
O’Malley did take the persistent view, on three separate occasions, that states which fail to implement that and other elements of Obamacare will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Touting Maryland as an “early implementer, O’Malley said that “We believe that covering our people, bringing down health costs long-term, that makes our states more competitive.” He in particular singled out potential Romney VP picks Bobby Jindal and Bob McDonnell, his gubernatorial counterpart in neighboring Virginia. In a memorable line, he said that McDonnell has problems with his legislature in Virginia, because “the only health care mandate they can embrace is trans vaginal ultrasounds for women.”
Again, this is the mentality. It’s not logical or rational in the short term. But it’s pretty clear that will be their perspective. Especially because those who would be left on the other side of the divide, in the event of rejecting the Medicaid expansion, would so clearly be on the side of the “other”:
For people of color, the impact of the mess that the court just rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue and out into the country cannot be understated. Blacks, Latinos and Asians are up to three times less likely to have insurance than whites. Half of the nation’s uninsured are people of color.
The Center for American Progress estimates that this racial gap in health care coverage costs the country $415 billion a year in lost productivity.
For black and brown America, affordable, quality healthcare is key to closing a wider economic gulf [...]
Medicaid is a mitigating force in this lopsided system. Blacks and Latinos are enrolled in Medicaid at twice the rate of whites. Half of those in the program are children. As the Kaiser Family Foundation has bluntly concluded, “Medicaid enables Black and Hispanic Americans to access health care.”
The recession has made this more true than ever. Three out of four people who lose their job, also lose their insurance. As a result, the number of people in Medicaid has soared to 60 million.
That final fact will be used as proof by Republican governors that we cannot expand Medicaid any more. It’s single-payer health care, after all. It’s the road to serfdom. And the beneficiaries are those dreaded minorities, who by the way don’t really vote at the same rates as “real Americans,” either.
I just don’t see this crop of Republican governors, for the most part, accepting expansion funds. And that’s bad news for black and brown America.
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I agree
Welcome to the USA civil war of 2012 and beyond
GOP governors will reject Medicaid Expansion in the short term, thinking it will at least run Blacks and Hispanics out of their States, “they may use it as a way to control immigration”
I agree Black and Brown people are in for a very rough time, it is not like they are having a good time in the USA now.
60 million people seems like a lot of people about 20% of our population. Does anyone know how many people will be on medicaid after the expansion is completed as planned?
Why didn’t President Obama and the Dems in congress just expand Medicaid to everyone who doesn’t have medical insurance?
I agree emphatically… In fact its part of the plan. Speaks to the lack of protection for Americans from state based health insurance monopolies, period. We can call it state’s right’s but really corporate control of a states, protecting their turf and business models from any form of competitiveness hence better value for the consumer/insured/citizen/taxpayer? They have now have the mandate, to extract billions of dollars from Americans with no real cost containment measures in place. Cost will rise and services will be restricted as is happening in Massachusetts, Yet many of these players in healthcare are considered tax exempt public charities? Go figure!
It is called being sick while ethnic.
I disagree about the expected decisions of the southern states. I think they will grudgingly accept the money for Medicaid expansion because otherwise they will have a much higher cost (including political fallout) to deal with the consequences. It’s just like the right-wing governors refusing to accept Stimulus money, remember? — most of them were dead set against it on principle (ideology) but they acquiesced because dammit, their state desperately needed the money! Conservatards have to be dragged kicking and screaming into decent society, but most of them eventually will go along once they learn how wrong they were.
As for the insurance and medical cartels, further reform certainly is needed to lower costs and I think this will come. Also, Americans (especially the poor) are likely to start taking better care of themselves when they have “skin in the game” and when they are seeing a doctor regularly.
Jindahl, Walker, Scott and their ilk will only be satisfied when they see sick people dying on the streets. Only then can they say with pride, “social Darwinism” as last!”
The Arizona Legislature refused federal unemployment extensions that would have cost the state nothing, simply because the Republican majority thinks UI benefits averaging $200 a week make people lazy. Oh, also it would add to the federal deficit. We are not dealing with rational people here.
(including political fallout)
You mean Political suicide…. Very high number of AA and AmLatinos support the ACA. Makes sense.
Very nice when misguided brownshirt ideology trumps decent human compasssion?
Who was it said?
I notice your remark – “Also, Americans (especially the poor) are likely to start taking better care of themselves when they have “skin in the game” and when they are seeing a doctor regularly.”
A remark like that is usually made by someone who cannot fathom that they themselves might be someday end up poor. And of course, maybe you cannot be made poor – you could be a Rockefeller or Dimon, for all I know.
But many people are only two or three paychecks away from not having their rent or mortgage payment. And many households would be bankrupted by even the now rather ordinary experience of a cancer diagnosis affecting them.
Poor people tend to live in really rotten sections of the country where the environmental pollution is so outrageous it is more than miraculous that even some of the people survive to the age of fifty. (Look at the “Carcinogen alley” of Louisiana,. where the waters are a dumping ground for effluvia from Big Oil Refineries, and the air is not fit to breathe.) Many waste incinerators are located in poorer sections of towns, cities and suburbs.
As far as preventative care, it can only do so much. While it is good if people can qualify for preventative health exams, there is no legislation afoot to see to it that the large grocery chains stop pulling their stores out of low income areas. So the chronically poor end up eating two and even three meals a day at fast food chains, as unless they have the ability to drive, they cannot obtain fresh meat and vegetables and fruit. Then factor in the fact that in places in the rougher ghettoes of America, children are raising themselves, and no longer have adults t teach the about how to cook and what to eat, so those kids are living on Seven Eleven Burritos and Slushes and candy bars.