Virginian Pilot: Expand Medicaid to Save Virginia Money

One aspect of the GOP's obsession to kill Obamacare - even though it has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court - is to resist the Medicaid expansion element of the larger plan.  Here in Virginia, Medicaid expansion would bring coverage to 400,000 Virginians, fuel new jobs in the health care industry and save Virginia money.  Yet in the up is down, black is white world of the GOP, these realities are beyond the comprehension of the cretins/Neanderthals of the GOP base and their trained circus dogs who comprise GOP elected officials.  Today's main page editorial in the Virginian Pilot recognizes the idiocy of the GOP position and urges Virginia to expand Medicaid.  Here are editorial highlights:

Census figures peg the number of uninsured Virginians at roughly 1 million, or about 12 percent of the commonwealth's population.

As many as 400,000 would be eligible to enroll in Medicaid's managed-care program if the state expands it in accordance with the federal Affordable Care Act.

Such a move would connect uninsured Virginians with a family doctor and help them seek preventive care and control chronic conditions without going to a hospital emergency room, where taxpayers and private insurance subsidize their care.

About 70 percent of Virginia's uninsured are part of a family where at least one adult works. . . .
But the counties and cities stretching from Surry to Grayson County in southwestern Virginia have high proportions of uninsured Virginians.

And many of them are simply stuck: They don't make enough to afford private insurance yet make too much to qualify for Medicaid under Virginia's miserly system.  The commonwealth's current Medicaid eligibility criteria are among the most exclusive in the nation, with coverage restricted to poor pregnant women, children and the disabled.

Republicans, led by Gov. Bob McDonnell, have opposed expansion of Medicaid by arguing that the federal government won't keep its word to cover costs as specified in federal law. The law requires the feds to pay 100 percent of expansion costs through 2016, gradually decreasing to 90 percent through 2021.

But that skepticism is self-defeating. Virginia can expand Medicaid so it reverts if the federal government's coverage drops below 90 percent.

Virginia can make a conditional expansion of Medicaid that allows the state to keep the $10 billion in new taxes Virginians must pay over the next five years. Otherwise, that money is heading to states that have already agreed to expand Medicaid.

That money will support 30,000 jobs needed to coordinate expansion of services.

More efficient, and effective, managed health care will be provided to the uninsured and working poor, which in turn will reduce overall health care costs for everyone. Virginia can save some of the hundreds of millions of dollars already spent every budget biennium in subsidies to hospitals, free clinics and community health care centers for treatment of the uninsured.

Of course, expanding medical access to the poor and needy is not consistent with the Christofascist/Tea Party desire to see such people simply die and disappear - especially if they are not white.  It is sick and perverse.