Quote from piezoe:
Think about this, and you will understand the problem. And the problem has little to do with non-citizens in the country illegally. In fact that cohort is merely the tip of an iceberg. The problem of the indigent not having access to medical care except through emergency rooms was intended to be solved by the ACA, but in fact is created all over again by the ideological hiatus between the Republican party and the Democrat party.
Let's start with reality. It is not you, not Scat, not Lucrum, not gbw-, not Tsing Tao, not Ricter, not denner, nor me that is showing up at the emergency room! And of course, you can not "force" anyone to buy insurance that has barely enough to eat. And there are virtually no "free clinics" in most of the North American Continent. Even the charity clinics, and there are few, and the care they give is as minimal as you can get, try to extract a few bucks.
The problem is entirely one of ideology. The ACA incorporated a provision for the destitute. It was the federally-paid expansion of medicaid. But 25 States, as allowed by the Court, elected to opt out of expanding medicaid to include these destitute people. And guess what., not 50%, not 95%, not even 99% of these States were States with Republican Governors. They were 100% States with Republican Governors! Now what did these Governors say was their reason for opting out? It was this: that even though the Federal Government would initially pick up the entire tab for the expansion, eventually the State would have to pay a small fraction of the cost of expansion and their State could not afford that. Now what is the reality? The reality is that it will cost those States that opted out dearly. The residents of those Sates will, through their federal income tax, be paying part of the cost of expanding medicaid in all the other 25 States. Furthermore, the damage to the States that opted out does not stop there. The States that opted out will be forgoing all the State tax revenue increase that accompanies expansion of medicaid. This revenue increase would virtually pay for all their additional cost of expanding medicaid in future years, plus more. In other words, expansion would not cost these State anything!!! They would be net beneficiaries! It is abundantly clear, to anyone that looks at this untenable situation dispassionately, that the opting out of medicaid expansion by these States with Republican Governors was 100% ideologically driven, with the sole intention of ruining Obamneycare. And what is so ironic is that Obamneycare is flawed to begin with because the Democratic administration tried to garner, unsuccessfully of course, Republican support for the ACA by adopting a flawed Republican-influenced plan.
This is beyond ironic, beyond ridiculous. It's absurd!!!
Please don't interpret anything I have written as an endorsement of the Democrat party. What I have written above is a condemnation of the Republican party and its destructive ideology, but it is certainly NOT an endorsement of our current administration.
