"Awesome in its evilness"
by digby
This otherwise celebratory Paul Krugman column about Obamacare contains one very depressing factoid:
At the state level, however, Republican governors and legislators are still in a position to block the act’s expansion of Medicaid, denying health care to millions of vulnerable Americans. And they have seized that opportunity with gusto: Most Republican-controlled states, totaling half the nation, have rejected Medicaid expansion. And it shows. The number of uninsured Americans is dropping much faster in states accepting Medicaid expansion than in states rejecting it.
What’s amazing about this wave of rejection is that it appears to be motivated by pure spite. The federal government is prepared to pay for Medicaid expansion, so it would cost the states nothing, and would, in fact, provide an inflow of dollars. The health economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the principal architects of health reform — and normally a very mild-mannered guy — recently summed it up: The Medicaid-rejection states “are willing to sacrifice billions of dollars of injections into their economy in order to punish poor people. It really is just almost awesome in its evilness.” Indeed.
And while supposed Obamacare horror stories keep on turning out to be false, it’s already quite easy to find examples of people who died because their states refused to expand Medicaid. According to one recent study, the death toll from Medicaid rejection is likely to run between 7,000 and 17,000 Americans each year.
Luckily, Medicaid has been expanded in certain states and it's making a difference. A big difference. I suspect there would be twice as many deaths without it. But since the medicaid expansion was the most traditionally progressive piece of the ACA it was always the most vulnerable piece of the reforms and the Supreme's found a way to allow conservatives to have their pound of flesh. They got a nice big chunk:
It's always at least a little bit interesting to put this map up by way of comparison.
Will we ever get past this division? It seem absurd that this divide could still be so obvious, at least as regards that Southern rump. It's America. I don't think it's ever going to change.
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