The worst thing Republicans have done to their own constituents

In their latest collaboration for The Washington Post, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman suggest political consequences ahead for Republican candidates, such as DeSantis in Florida, who have refused to allow millions of low-income Americans to obtain health insurance through Obamacare. It’s a compelling political point they make, given the popularity of Obamacare and what just happened in North Carolina.
Incredibly, 10 states have still not gotten on board.

The refusal of red-state governors and legislators to take advantage of the Medicaid expansion offered under the Affordable Care Act is the worst thing Republicans have done to their own constituents. And all because they hated the ACA and hated that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats who were in Congress in 2010 get all the credit for it.

At one point, more than 20 states refused the expanded Medicaid funding.

During several interviews I conducted with him, Jonathan Weiner, a health policy expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, remained objective in his assessments of the ACA and reluctant to characterize its opponents.

But he did not hold back on the refusal of Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, Florida, Georgia and other states to take federal money set aside for Medicaid expansion.
“It’s hard to estimate exactly how many, but hundreds of people die every month because they do not have an insurance card,” Weiner said. The refusal of Republicans to take Medicaid funds, he said, constituted “the biggest case of political malpractice I’ve seen in my life.”

I call it immoral.

While they failed to stop the ACA in Congress and at the Supreme Court, Republicans and conservative organizations effectively kept the law from being fully implemented, denying health insurance to thousands of Americans who cannot otherwise afford it.
That is the most reprehensible aspect of Republicans’ long, unnecessary and counterproductive battle over health insurance – partisan, spiteful politics that directly affected, and hurt, the people they pretend to serve.