Tales from the States as they try to outdo one another toward retrogression.
Letting Us Die: Republican Governors Are The New “Death Panel”
Meet the newest “Death Panel” on the block.
They are the six Republican governors who have vowed refuse the Medicaid expansion that will happen most other states, under the Affordable Care Act — Rick Scott (FL), Rick Perry (TX), Phil Bryant (MS), Nikki Haley (SC), Terry Branstad (IA), and Bobby Jindal (LA). These Republican governors are opening the “trap door” that the Supreme Court installed in the Affordable Care Act, even at it upheld most of the law. But it’s the poorest residents in these states, many of whom are African American and Latino, and who would have gained health coverage and access to care, that will fall through that trap door.
While the Court upheld the bulk of the Affordable Care Act, it weakened the Medicaid expansion written into the bill. Since Medicaid is a federally-funded, state-administered program, under the health care reform law, the federal government would pay 100% of the state governments’ additional costs for the first three years of the Medicaid expansion, and 93% each year after that. As the law was written, the federal government could take away the existing Medicaid funding of states that refused the Medicaid expansion. However, the Supreme Court ruled that states could refuse to expand their Medicaid programs, and the federal government can’t penalize them by taking away their existing Medicaid funding.
In other words, the Supreme Right Wing Court left the “carrot” but took away the “stick,” and in the process cut a hole in health care reform just big enough for millions of Americans who need its benefits the most to slip right through.
GOP and GOP Supreme Court Scum Are Shit
Texas will not expand Medicaid or implement a state health exchange following the Supreme Court’s upholding of the constitutionality of Obamacare, Gov. Rick Perry (R) said Monday.
“If anyone was in doubt, we in Texas have no intention to implement so-called state exchanges or to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, I will not be party to socializing healthcare and bankrupting my state in direct contradiction to our Constitution and our founding principles of limited government,” Perry said in a statement Monday. His office said that he will be sending a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Perry joins a growing list of GOP governors who say they won’t implement the two provisions, including Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.
The federal government, however, will implement the health insurance exchanges for the states if they don’t do so.
The Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate, but struck down the penalty in the law for states to lose their Medicaid funding if they do not participate in the expansion, which covers those with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line.
The Medicaid expansion would reduce the number of uninsured in Texas. The state has the highest rate of uninsured in the country, at 25 percent, or 6.2 million people.It also has the worst health care services and delivery in the nation according to the federal Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.
H/T: HuffPo
Governor Paul LePage call the IRS under Obamacare “the new Gestapo”
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/lepage-rails-against-obamacare-calls-irs-new-gestapo.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
I’m failing to see the connection between the systematic murder of ten million people and having to buy health insurance.
A member of Gov. Sam Brownback’s administraton, speaking on background, said officials were still analyzing the decision but that it appeared it would make it difficult for states to not participate in the Medicaid expansion.
On the record, Brownback officials said they still wanted no part of “Obamacare” and “will take no action to implement it.”
Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal stands proud Louisiana is 48th in states ranking of uninsured children.
Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) said the Supreme Court’s “frightening” ruling that upheld the Affordable Care as a tax is a “blow to our freedoms.” “What’s next?” Jindal asked, according to The Hill. He voiced concern for people who “refuse to eat tofu” or “refuse to drive a Chevy Volt” — even though the court ruled the individual mandate to buy health insurance was not constitutional under the Commerce Clause. Jindal said he expects opposition to the law to “escalate” before the presidential election and that Republican governors will not implement the law before November.
(via generalbriefing)
The Affordable Care Act requires states to have exchanges. A state has several options: It can build the exchange itself, or it can collaborate with the federal government to build it, or it can let the federal government run it. The state has to tell the feds what path it has decided to take by mid-November. If the state does not want to run its own exchange, or collaborate with the feds to run it, the feds will begin setting up the exchange themselves in January.
If Jindal is serious about not implementing an exchange, the latter course is what will happen under the law, says Kathleen Stoll, the deputy executive director at the pro-Obamacare Families USA.
“If the state hasn’t moved forward, at that point, the feds have to come in to run the exchange to protect the citizens of Lousiana,” Stoll says. “The irony is that Jindal has made a choice to waste time and available federal dollars he could have used to build a state exchange uniquely tailored to his vision and the needs of the people of Louisiana.”
The same Rick Scott, of course, who wants to keep the poor and the not-white from voting.
