Amid all of the real and manufactured problems with the Affordable Care Act roll out, the expansion of Medicaid as part of the law is having an impact on low-income working families. States that are taking advantage of the expansion are able to cover more working poor. Oddly, many Rethug politicians think they have a 2014 winner in bad-mouthing Medicaid expansion. Case in point: Rethuglican Senate Minority Leader and turtle/human hybrid
Mitch "Missy' McConnell. Missy, who is being challenged by a tea bagger for the Rethug nomination, and who faces a tough general election challenge in Dem
Alison Lundergan Grimes, isn't taking any chances in bashing the working poor to appeal to the far right wingers:
“Well look, if I went out here on the street today [and said], ‘You guys want free health care?’ I expect you’d have a lot of signups."
"
Free health care." The irony in Missy's statement is that people without health insurance or Medicaid end up in the emergency room for their health care, which is "free" to them, but which costs everyone with health insurance because those costs are absorbed by them.
So Missy thinks he has a winning, appeal-to-teabagger-anger case. Not so fast,
says Greg Sargent in the
formerly great Washington Post Bezos Bugle. The Dems can appeal to low income working voters who may align culturally with the Rethug message on, say, immigration or marriage equality by providing expanded Medicaid coverage and easing their health care burden. Eighty-five percent of new signups for health care in Kentucky are under the expanded Medicaid program, and those are often the independent or Rethug-leaning lower income working voters struggling in an economy where wages are stagnant and health care costs (and the incomes of the top 1%) are growing. The Dems would be wise to take that on.
(Slow is his M.O.)
