Richard E. Merritt’s op ed inquires “Who Takes Care of the Uninsured Poor?” while railing against congressional Republicans’ feckless attempts to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare (when they should be straight-forwardly repealing it as they’ve voted to do a dozen times), before slamming the Virginia legislature and 18 other states which have declined “free” federal funding for Medicaid expansion.
Amidst the handwringing about the poor, readers should instead focus on what the liberals don’t tell us, which is (1) ObamaCare was lied into existence by low-balling the cost estimates, (2) it was written by the pharmaceutical, health insurance, and hospital industry lobbyists to underwrite their business models with insurance for the poor as a byproduct, (3) insurers are exiting the marketplaces in droves because their lobbyists didn’t do good math, (4) it is partly funded by morally repugnant taxes on medical equipment such as a hospital-type bed for someone in home hospice, and (5) Medicaid expansion is funded primarily by deficit spending such that the 19 stalwart states refusing it are preventing the federal government from living further beyond its means.
Liberals assure us that ObamaCare will afford us a healthier, more productive workforce, which will be good for economic growth, but only a small percentage of these reputed benefits finds its way back to the treasury. By this perverse logic of deficit spending, economic growth relies on red ink.
Let me assure letter-writer Cedar Dvorin [“Why Not Health Care for All?] that our Republican state legislators are not “too mean” to expand Medicaid; their sort is too scared of constituents like me who are more numerous in their districts and are motivated to vote in primaries. Where we might agree is that “Medicare for all,” which pays for itself and covers everyone, makes more sense than ObamaCare.
Dino Drudi
Alexandria