Medicaid Expansion In Virginia: Health Care For Me, Not For Thee!

Virginia representatives are debating whether to allow Medicaid expansion in the Commonwealth, and the usual suspects are coming out of the Koch closet woodwork to offer their solicited testimonials:

On Wednesday, Colonial Heights insurance agent Frank Lundie stepped up to offer his story at a news conference in front of his business. He said he had been reluctant to speak but had to, given what Burke said in the 18th century: that evil triumphs “when good men do nothing.” 

Lundie went on to say that the premium on his personal insurance plan doubled and his annual deductible rose by $2,000 as a result of the law. The Affordable Care Act led to the cancellation of millions of existing insurance policies, he said, so even by the White House’s “fuzzy math,” more people lost insurance than got it. 

His complaints centered on problems with the broader health-care law, not Medicaid expansion per se. But Lundie and Republican leaders argued that the law’s well-known flaws are reason enough to resist expansion. 

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see,” Lundie, quoting [Ayn] Rand, told about 50 politicians and business leaders at the gathering.

Well, we certainly know what bees are buzzing in Mr. Lundie's bonnet, given the Ayn Rand and Edmund Burke quotes (freedumb!), and equating affordable health care with "evil."  You're quite the frothing nut compassionate conservative, Mr. Lundie!  We look forward to someone doing a fact check on the Koch brothers'  Lundie's story;  we'd be willing to bet it's like every other fabricated pile of bullshit being generated by the right, notably the Americans for Plutocrat Prosperity.

In the meantime, we like what this letter writer had to say in this morning's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle:

The March 9 Metro article “Who deserves to receive Medicaid? Residents echo lawmakers’ debate” contained a nugget that seems to define precisely the argument against expanding the program. It quoted a man who earns $11,670 at his job, just over the poverty line, but doesn’t qualify for Medicaid. He struggles to afford his asthma treatments. The article then quoted a woman opposed to expansion: “Tabatha Weathers, 27, said the abuses she’s seen have made her wary of opening up Medicaid too broadly. ‘Somebody like me, I need it,’ she said . . . [S]he couldn’t afford her obstetrician appointments without the Medicaid she receives.” 

There you have it. Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act is just another effort to create a boondoggle program. As long as you already have Medicaid.

George Chuzi, McLean

We'd like to hope that, for every Frank Lundie (and Mrs. Lundie? see comments) and Tabatha Weathers, there are at least four George Chuzis... and that they vote.

(Image:  Ayn Rand -  "the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see" is her self-serving hypocrisy, Mr. Lundie, and yours.)