The actual search phrase is that won the day is fairly long: “president Obama aims to expand medicaid, the huge health insurance program for the poor” (… quite declarative for an online search, isn’t it?)
What strikes me is the second half of search phrase insofar as the tone of its categorization “... the huge health insurance program for the poor.” The connotation is pretty clear, and I’d bet $10 that this person performed the search immediately after hearing the phrase from some right-wing squawker.
What happens to people on Medicaid if it’s cut?
What is often forgotten is that Medicaid helps a lot people, DIFFERENT people than what the Republican talking points want you to believe: the right-wing propaganda robots are doing everything in their power to brand Medicaid as a synonym for the infamous “welfare queen” – deny it and your nose will grow – I cannot be bothered to argue that point. If you cannot admit that, then you are already truly and hopelessly lost in Republican Bubble Land.
42% of medicaid spending goes to the disabled, and 26% goes to the elderly. 68% of all medicaid spending has nothing to do with the assumed “poor people take advantage of the system” stereotype the right is trying to inject into your belief system. Then you know what? Another 19% goes to children. I’ll let you do the math on the rest that goes for health care costs for adults…. and be honest with yourself: who knows the thousands of possible reasons why a person might need Medicaid assistance at one point in their lives. What if you were to crash your car and end up bound to a wheelchair? What if you lost your job? What if you got old? Chances are you know someone who needed Medicaid assistance, but you don’t know it because of the stigma around it. If Mitt Romney’s father needed public assistance, then it’s a possibility for anyone.
Making all the medicaid and medicare cuts that republicans desire… those cuts don’t magically make the disabled, elderly, and children who need health care disappear into a poof of anti-Obama mo-jo or magical Gingrich-cartoon fairy dust! What are those republicans who cary God and Christian values like a turbo-charged burning bush plan to do with all of those people – their fellow citizens? What kind of people are we? We’re NOT the kind that leaves our people in need – to die without help or dignity. I don’t care how much you hate Obama: we’re not the kind of country to pull the rug out from under our own neighbors.
Are there plans to expand Medicaid and does Obama support that idea: yes. However, I had hoped that Bill Clinton’s speech at the DNC might have made some important points.
You must understand the contrasts between the agendas of the two major parties: the Republican Party and Romney / Ryan want to repeal Obamacare, privatize Medicare, and drastically cut back Medicaid. That’s true, and it’s also something that the Catholic Church has come out against as being immoral. The Democrats want to make sure the key parts of Obamacare take effect in 2014, medicaid expansion being one part of that, and progressives would like to see a single payer system like every other major western country in the world (but Obamacare does NOT create single payer… other than keeping Medicare, that is).
Medicaid is an enormous help to the disabled in the United States. So if you enjoy taking services away from people in wheelchairs, for example, then go ahead, vote Republican and keep searching in your cynical manner. There is also a medicaid buy-in option for disabled persons to get coverage by paying a premium that they can afford. This isn’t just about the nasty “welfare queen” stereotype that the extreme right wants you to believe.
Medicaid also helps hundreds of thousands of elderly people to augment Medicare (because in the opinion of many people, Medicare is not enough coverage if we consider ourselves a moral country). Moreover, Medicaid is vital for people in nursing homes and long term care facilities – 60% of all nursing home patience need medicaid. 60%… So if you want to put grandma out on the street, go ahead, vote Republican.
It’s also targeted at children: make sure they have a chance, basically. So if you believe in denying things like flu shots, wellness visits, and all those vital visits for your children… you like to see kids suffer… go ahead, vote republican. (Extreme language choice, yes – but it’s also true.)
Medicaid is not just the Federal government: states fund it as well. This is very, very important. Obama’s plan to expand medicaid is very much designed to take much of the financial burden OFF of the states. That handful of crazy republican governors who say they will refuse medicaid expansion assistance (simply because it’s chic to refuse and reject anything from Obama not matter what it is)… if they refuse that from the federal government, then that requires MORE money from the citizens of that state to pay for those patients (because, what? all those nursing home patients will just “disappear”?)
We ALL know that pooling resources of all 50 states to help makes much more sense than each state having to tax its local citizens… especially when you look at which states have the highest medicaid costs…. hint: most are not blue states… the state with the HIGHEST medicaid costs per recipient is the home of a certain former, half-term Governor who likes to hunt wolves from airplanes. “The state that had the highest per enrollee average for Medicaid (Alaska) spent 253 percent more than the lowest spending state (California).”
If Obama does NOT expand medicaid payments by the federal government to assist the states, then the states are stuck with a greater burden, and if you look at their policy points: that means raising state taxes to make up the difference. They HAVE to pay for it somehow. Simply saying No to Obama might be cool on a bumper sticker, but it doesn’t magically make old people and the disabled disappear and no longer need assistance.
So if you prefer to live in a country where its citizens willingly, and cynically decide that they would rather leave the disabled and elderly people of the country to… literally die without any care… then vote Republican.
Clearly, not my “favorite” search of the day, but needed a response nevertheless.
