Several Republican governors have said they plan not to expand their states' Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act. On The Rachel Maddow Show Monday, one former governor said failing to do so would be "gubernatorial malpractice."
Howard Dean said accepting federal money to expand Medicaid would not only help the uninsured, it would also jolt states' struggling economies.
"This is just stupidity if governors refuse this," said Dean, who served as governor of Vermont and came close to capturing the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. "Because not only does it boost their healthcare sector and insure a lot of people, it raises their gross domestic product, because it increases spending by the private sector and the hospital sector in every aspect of the state's economy."
The Supreme Court ruled last week that states could not be penalized for refusing to expand Medicaid under the new law, potentially opening the door for Republican-led states to leave billions of federal dollars for that purpose on the table.
Dean predicted to guest-host Ezra Klein that even Texas, which has appeared among the most reluctant of all states to implement Obamacare, and which stands to receive more federal Medicaid dollars than any other state, will relent when push comes to shove.
"I don't care who the governor in Texas is, they're gonna take this money," said Dean. "It's $52 billion, and they have a really sophisticated network of hospitals, probably the third or fourth most sophisticated in the whole country ... If you think that the governor, whoever it is, whether Republican or Democrat, is gonna be able to turn down $52 billion and not be eaten alive by places like Baylor and UT Medical Center, you've got another thing coming."
Dean said he expects other red states to follow suit.
"South Carolina gets an 80 percent [federal] match," he continued. "For [Governor] Nikki Haley not to take that 80 percent from the federal government is gubernatorial malpractice. It just is. I mean, that's a hell of a lot of money coming into a state that isn't doing so well," he said.
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I feel that Howard Dean would, in normal times, be absolutely correct. The problem here is that the GOP has gone further to the right than I ever remember, or read about, that they ever have gone. To me this means that there may well be a substantial delay in implementation until all political value is sucked out of denial. Sad.
The ACA has in it the ability for the federal government to take over the exchanges for health insurance for non-compliant states. The ACA has gone through all three branches of the government. President Obama is in all likelihood going to be reelected. The GOP governors will have to make a choice: either implement ACA or lose billions of dollars in Medicaid funds to expand coverage to their uninsured. The GOP governors will all be singing to a different tune in January when President Obama takes the oath of office again. Voters have a responsibility to hold the GOP governors to account. I do not see a scenario where any governor could afford to lose billions of dollars in Medicaid money when their hospital administrators, doctors, and nurses are screaming at them to take the money. Money talks and B.S. walks will be the mantra after January when the political reality of election posturing wears off. After what the GOP has done to women and to Hispanics, two groups Romney must have to win, I think President Obama will have a close race but he will win. Its the Senate and House I get worried about because of the Super-PAC money from the Citizen's United ruling and the recent Montana case from our right winged Supreme Court.
True.
The Affordable Health Care act allows for provisions to create federal agencies in states that block these provisions.
Right-to-work states already have federal agencies to deal with labor disputes. The difficulty is that Bush defunded those agencies.
Well.
Rising unemployment is linked with republican policies.
Now bankrupted elderly and hospitals are going to be linked with republican policies.