Republicans Keep Killing People
Ten states won’t take federal money for Medicaid, and it’s leaving people to die
Mississippi is one of ten states led by Republican legislatures that have refused federal money to provide medical care to people experiencing poverty.
According to the New York Times, “A State’s Choice to Forgo Medicaid Funds Is Killing Hospitals.”
Let’s rephrase that: it’s killing people.
Republicans are afraid that if they offer medical care to people who can’t afford it, they will stop working, become freeloaders, and take away the hard-earned dollars of the people like them, who deserve it.
It’s an old argument and one based on a fallacy. Good health doesn’t promote laziness — good health promotes physical activity — like getting out of bed and feeling good enough to attend a job every day.
Conversely, poor health promotes inactivity — not laziness — but the inability to work.
But that’s not the real issue these ignorant Republicans are focused on. The real problem is a combination of racist stupidity and a sense of superiority compared to people with low incomes — whom they do not consider worth saving.
Republicans in the ten states refusing to take the money offered by the federal government for the purpose of providing healthcare to people experiencing poverty don’t want to help them.
They have an aversion to POC, drug addicts, or anybody who isn’t like them. That’s the real issue here. It’s time we stopped pretending otherwise.
Mississippi has a budget surplus of $3.9 B — Republicans want to use it to reduce income taxes rather than save lives
If Mississippi were to accept the federal funding available to them for Medicaid expansion, they would receive $1.35 B annually — compared to the meager $600 M they are spending to cover those currently covered by Medicaid.
Among Mississippi adults, only disabled people and parents with extremely low incomes, along with most pregnant women, are eligible for Medicaid. Many of the ineligible are also too poor to qualify for the tax credits for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, leaving them without affordable options.
Over 100,000 people making less than $20k/year would be covered if Republicans in Mississippi were willing to admit that the Affordable Care Act and expanded Medicaid would help the people of Mississippi, many of them POC. But they won’t do it. Neither the Republican Governor nor the Republican legislature believes providing healthcare to their low-income residents is a priority — in fact, they would argue, it will make things worse.
“Don’t simply cave under the pressure of Democrats and their allies in the media who are pushing for the expansion of Obamacare, welfare and socialized medicine,” Mr. Reeves said in his annual State of the State address in January.
Opponents also argue that the newly insured would become dependent on Medicaid and therefore be less likely to work. “I believe we should be working to get people off Medicaid as opposed to adding more people to it,” said Philip Gunn, the powerful Republican House speaker.
They’d rather give up that money and doom those people to misery and desperation than admit that “Obamacare” works.
What this means for people who can’t afford healthcare
Dr. Daniel P. Edney is Mississippi’s top health official. He has been “careful not to take sides” and has made it clear that he does not set the Medicaid policy.
If the state’s top health official is afraid to enter the fray to ensure the health of all the state’s residents, what hope do the people of Mississippi have?
“I can tell you I have a number of patients who are on dialysis with renal failure for the rest of their life because they couldn’t afford the medication for their blood pressure, and that caused their kidneys to go bad,” said Dr. John Lucas, a Greenwood Leflore surgeon. — New York Times
Already, many hospitals in Mississippi are barely staffed, and more and more are closing. That’s because they can’t turn a profit without the federal Medicaid money the state’s leaders refuse to accept. If things continue as they are, one doctor predicted that at least five more hospitals would be nothing but emergency rooms for the direst medical situations.
This is unacceptable anywhere, but particularly in a state where
“. . . death rates are at or near the nation’s highest for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, kidney disease and pneumonia. Infant mortality is also sky-high, and the Delta has the nation’s highest rate of foot and leg amputations because of diabetes or hypertension.
Think about that — the highest rate of foot and leg amputations because of a lack of care for common healthcare issues like diabetes and hypertension. And the Governor is afraid to expand Medicaid because it will give people a cushion that will prevent them from working.
How does Reeves think having a foot or a leg amputated affects one’s work life? Ah, right, he doesn’t think.
Republican Governor Reeves is fighting a culture war while ignoring the healthcare needs of hundreds of thousands
Mississippi’s Governor, Tate Reeves, is full of bluster and bravado about the current state of his state. In his 2023 address, he crowed about the culture wars Mississippi is fighting to “let boys play boys sports” and “protect the innocence of our children.”
He is thrilled with his ground-breaking decision to “set age restrictions on driving a car and getting a tattoo.” Yeah, a real maverick, right on the cutting edge of political reform.
Meanwhile, nine other Republican-led states are following Mississippi’s lead. As a result, approximately 2 million people are unnecessarily uninsured because a handful of Republican elitists refuse to cooperate with a federal program instituted during the Black man’s presidency. This is what it all comes down to — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Republicans are not good at managing the economy
It’s also time we stopped pretending Republicans are better at managing the economy than Democrats. Talk of cutting spending, reducing taxes, and eliminating so-called “entitlements” is not managing the economy. It’s messaging — and it’s been used to mislead Americans since the Reagan era.
Going back to Franklin Roosevelt, the four presidents who logged the biggest growth in gross domestic product were, in declining order, the Democrats Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton, according to a February New York Times infographic by David Leonhardt and Yaryna Serkez. Three of the four presidents who logged the smallest GDP growth were Republicans. (The exception was Harry Truman. . . in last place, Donald Trump.)
The same goes for job growth, which has historically been better under Democrats.
The four presidents who logged the slowest job-growth rate were all Republicans (Eisenhower; the two Bushes; and, again in last place, Trump, the only president in the past nine decades to lose more jobs than he created).
When we invest in our people, we all benefit. It’s not quite the same as the old Wealth of Nations argument that a “rising tide lifts all ships.” The truth is, the only rising tide that lifts all ships is when the tide includes investing in the health and well-being of the populace.
The current system in which the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer is the result of the Republican mindset — and we can’t afford it anymore — we never could.
We need to change the message
The issue here is messaging. Somehow, the people of Mississippi are dying because they lack proper healthcare, and yet they are still voting Republicans into office. And they are not the only ones.
Wyoming, Kansas, Texas, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida have yet to adopt the expansion of Medicaid, leaving over 2.1 million people in the “coverage gap” — meaning they fall into the income level that would make them eligible for Medicaid but cannot access it because their state has not adopted it, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. — The Hill
The decision to refuse funds needed to provide healthcare is gross negligence on the part of the Republicans who were elected to serve the people — not just the people like them. The withholding of needed medical care to make a political point should not be tolerated. The people of these ten states should be able to sue their state government for abuse, but they can’t.
The only way to stop this outrageous abuse of American citizens is for the people in these states to vote Republicans out of office and bring in people who will honor their responsibility as servants of the people and actually serve the people — not their own perverted self-interests.
This is the single message every non-Republican in every one of these ten states needs to send during the next election cycle:
VOTE REPUBLICANS OUT OF OFFICE — IF YOU DON’T, IT COULD KILL YOU.