Posted on 03/17/2015 6:45:05 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Party of Science has struck again. Conservatives who are either programmatically or philosophically allergic to the notion that expanding access to Medicaid is tantamount to providing the poor access to health care will be surprised to learn that they are heartless ghouls who may also be complicit in an untold number of negligent homicides.
During Monday’s White House press briefing, Press Sec. Josh Earnest reportedly equated the decision made by some governors to decline to expand access to Medicaid in their state under the Affordable Care Act with a lack of concern for the health of their constituents:
Earnest re GOP resistance to Medicaid expansion: Republicans putting "political ambition" against lives in their states
— Jared Rizzi (@JaredRizzi) March 16, 2015
Josh Earnest: Republicans in non-Medicaid-expansion states putting their political ambitions above lives of people.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) March 16, 2015
This is not an unfamiliar line of attack from the most aggressive elements of the liberal coalition. Even the president has echoed this theme, though he uses softer language when accusing Republicans of consigning their constituents to a prolonged and agonizing demise in service to their parochial political concerns. “I think there’s a recognition that it makes sense,” Obama said of Medicaid expansion during a winter meeting with the nation’s governors in February, “and it’s bigger than politics.”
For a segment of the American polity that projects so wildly that they routinely accuse their political opponents of treason and murder over slights to their fragile sensibilities, but howls over the perceived offense of having the president’s patriotism questioned, this behavior is at least consistent. This kind of paranoid is not, however, rooted in anything other than emotion and anxiety. For those with an interest in expanding access to healthcare, increasing the burden on state-level Medicaid programs is the wrong way to go about addressing that issue.
Among the benefits associated with Obamacare, its advocates once claimed, was the anticipated reduced burden on emergency rooms as newly insured low-income Americans finally began to seek primary care from other sources. That was just one of many purportedly positive aspects of the ACA that never came to be.
“When you give people Medicaid, it seems they use both more primary care and more emergency room services,” NPR reported last June. “In other words, people are going to the emergency department for things that aren’t emergencies. This is exactly what policymakers hoped to avoid by giving people health insurance – including the huge increase in Medicaid coverage coming as part of the Affordable Care Act.”
But at least those poor souls thrown into the Medicaid pool now have better health outcomes where they once did not, right? Wrong, according to Oregon Health Insurance Experiment researchers. “Consistent with lackluster results from the first year, the OHIE’s second-year results found no evidence that Medicaid improves the physical health of enrollees,” CATO’s Michael F. Cannon summarized. “There were some modest improvements in depression and financial strain–but it is likely those gains could be achieved at a much lower cost than through an extremely expensive program like Medicaid.”
This exposes the third and perhaps most galling distortion from Obamacare backers. The Oregon study also found “Medicaid increases annual spending in the emergency department by about $120 per covered individual.” That’s right: There are no cost reductions associated with expanded Medicaid access. “If all 50 states had implemented the law’s Medicaid expansion, the additional ER spending might have hit $1 billion per year,” Cannon wrote in a subsequent piece for Forbes.
For those state governments that do opt to expand access to Medicaid, they will soon be responsible for the full costs associated with that expansion when the federal funding runs dry. Those states are in for a political crisis when constituents, as foreshadowed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott.
“We saw that firsthand with education,” he wrote in 2012. “When Washington cut off the roughly $1 billion in stimulus money to our education budget, our people demanded that our state legislature and I replace it. It wasn’t easy, but we did it. We don’t want to be forced into a position where we have to choose between Medicaid and education or other important parts of our state budget.”
Agree or disagree with the arguments above, at least they are based in reason. Implying you’re your political opponents are motivated by wholly base motives is a compelling argument only for those already predisposed to agree with the premise. But so much of the rhetoric out of the Obama administration today is focused on shoring up the increasingly fractious liberal Democratic coalition and not expanding the tent by appealing to skeptics’ common sense.
Clean up the VA first before you talk about the party of death.
But Ted Cruz scares children. /s
And giving Iran a nuke is...?
no, canceling 10 million peoples’ health insurance so you can force them into the crappy coverage in the crappier exchanges is sentencing them to death.
Not So is a complete moron.
The fundamental problem here is that Obamacare wasn’t really sold as a way to fulfill any sort of moral obligation to provide health care to the poor.
It was sold on economics: that it would lower costs (an average of $2500 per household), constrain market inflation, provide better care and services per dollar spent, and would all be done while allowing those who liked and wanted to keep their plans/doctors to keep them. Oh, and it would have the additional side benefit of providing more care to more people.
We now know that the economic arguments Obamacare was sold on were deliberate lies; a Trojan Horse designed to facilitate passage, allowing the promoters to fall back on the immorality of taking healthcare away from the poor once the scheme was exposed for what it was.
The truth is that if the truth of what was being done, and the knowlege of the duplicity involved was known at the time, the American public would have risen up in outrage sufficient enough to sway a few Democrat Senators over to a bipartisan opposition of the thing.
So, in the end, if presented with the choice of being called a “ghoul” or a “liar”, I’d much rather be called a ghoul.
Mrs. Earnst’s little Joshua needs to lighten up a bit. Republicans don’t kill Americans, DemocRATS kill Americans.
Mark Levin calls him regularly — Josh “NOT” Earnest :)
You know, like obammycare did.
Is J. Ernest advocating for a return to slavery?
Medicaid/medicare/etc. are funded by...taxpayers; rarely is the cost FULLY born by those that utilize the service. We already have a distortion of insurance because of 3rd party-payers (IE: One does not use their car insurance for an oil change).
So, instead, he thinks the education/time/$$, paid for by the healthcare professionals, should make them subservient to those whom seek out their skills??
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