Last January, Louisiana voters elected John Bel Edwards governor (the only Democrat governor in the Deep South). On just his second day in office he signed an executive order that made Louisiana the 31st state to expand Medicaid, which is a crucial part of Obamacare. Edwards’s predecessor, Bobby Jindal, rejected the measure on the grounds – and I’m not making this up – that expanding access would “jeopardize the care of the most vulnerable in our society.”
The law is having a transformative effect, according to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. “Patients burst into tears at this city’s glistening new charity hospital when they learned they could get Medicaid health insurance,” Noam Levey reported. One doctor said telling patients that they were eligible for health care coverage – something most of us take for granted — was like telling them, “I cured cancer.”
Residents who had held off getting prescriptions filled or postponed screenings or seeing a doctor are now able to do so with Medicaid coverage.
This is a great public policy story — one that shows how a targeted effort using government resources for the most vulnerable can produce positive, even life-changing results. But the political part of the story is less great in the 19 states that have continued to reject calls for expansion.
Not coincidentally, all 19 have either a Republican governor or a Republican state legislature. While many of these states have argued that the costs will be prohibitive, it’s long past time to discard this dishonest talking point.
But in the 19 GOP-controlled states that continue to refuse Medicaid expansion, a different choice is being made: to put political preservation and hatred of President Obama above the needs of their citizens. Not surprisingly, these states are among the unhealthiest in the nation, with some of the highest rates of illnesses and deaths from diseases that are often easily preventable.
There might not be a bigger and more shameful political story in America today than this one. And there also might not be a better example of the fundamental divide that separates America’s two political parties.
It's truly sad.
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