New York Times Slams Virginia GOP

Few things reveal the meanness and viciousness - not to mention rank hypocrisy - of the Virginia Republicans more than their opposition to Medicaid expansion and their apparent willingness to force a state government shut down.  Among the arguments that the Virginia GOP puts forth for opposing Medicaid Expansion is that Virginia's current Medicaid system is "out of control."  As I note in my May, 2014, VEER Magazine column, the truth is something far different.  A fact sheet complied by Fairfax County provides very enlightening data.  Here are a few highlights about the current program:

Virginia’s current eligibility requirements are so strict that although Virginia is the 11th largest state in terms of population and 7th in per capita personal income, Virginia ranked 43rd in Medicaid enrollment as a proportion of the state’s population and 47th in per capita Medicaid spending.

Of those currently enrolled in Medicaid, 57.2% are children, 17.8% are people with disabilities, and 8% are older adults. 

Yes, you read that right.  57.2% are children and many of the 400,000 Virginians who would gain coverage through Medicaid expansion would likewise be children.  And this doesn't even factor in the fact that Virginians are already paying federal taxes to support such expansion.  Some estimates put the tax outflow at $5 million per day ($1.825 billion on an annual basis).  If Virginia does not expand Medicaid, these tax revenues will not return to Virginia. 

The real motivation behind the GOP obstructionism is the desire to thwart ANT program backed by Barack Obama.  Much of this opposition despite claims to the contrary is purely racial and aimed at both America's first black president and Virginia's poor blacks who the GOP would have the party's white supremacist base believe would be expansion's main beneficiaries.  And this from the party that purports to honor Christian values yet makes the Biblical Pharisees look like charitable philanthropists and upright individuals in comparison.  The New York Times looks at Virginia Republicans are doing and rightly calls them out.  Here are editorial highlights:

In Virginia, there are 400,000 low-income people who can’t afford health coverage but don’t qualify for federal insurance subsidies. If they lived across the state line in Maryland, West Virginia or Kentucky, which have expanded their Medicaid programs, they could get the coverage they need. Terry McAuliffe, the Virginia governor, campaigned on bringing an expanded Medicaid program to Virginia, too.

But it hasn’t happened, and the reason is a group of recalcitrant Republicans in the House of Delegates who have blocked Medicaid expansion at every opportunity. They are so determined to keep poor people from getting health care that they are preventing passage of a two-year budget for the state for the fiscal year beginning July 1. If an agreement isn’t reached by then, they seem fully prepared to let the state government shut down, furloughing employees and shuttering services just as their counterparts in Washington did last fall.

There are obvious benefits to expanded Medicaid, which the Republicans have chosen to ignore. For three years, the federal government would pay 100 percent of Virginia’s expansion — a multibillion-dollar infusion — as opposed to the current 50-50 split in Virginia and most states.  

These arguments are so compelling that Republicans have been reduced to a familiar dead-end explanation for their refusal: namely, that the federal government can’t be trusted to pay the 90 percent share promised by the health care law.

Hoping to avoid a government shutdown, Governor McAuliffe is now exploring whether he can expand Medicaid without the legislature’s approval. That raises complicated legal and constitutional questions, but his impulse — in the face of coldhearted political opposition — is perfectly understandable.

The moral bankruptcy of today's Republican Party of Virginia is nearly complete.  Personally, I would be embarrassed/ashamed to still be a Republican and thinks are to the point now where I can only openly question the morality of those who continue to support the GOP  at the state and/or federal level.