The GOP Is The New Death Panel Because Of Denial Of Medicaid In States It Controls.

[TheMastersNemesis]

The GOP is sentencing many Americans to early and unnecessary death where it has turned down health care. We still have a large number of Americans who need health care and won't get it.

If they were to get their way on ACA and appeal it I would bet that half of our country would not have access to medical services.

[Shandris]

1. At 24 states that rejected...

...it practically -is- half the nation.

It infuriates me that, for all the brilliant people employed in making ACA, not one of them had the foresight to predict that the Republicans would use courts to try to stop it. That's almost criminal (in a metaphoric sense; obviously I don't -actually- think its criminal).

And you just know Indiana will never get around to changing it. Heck, $11,000 a year is too much money here. You're better off losing your job permanently if you get sick in Indiana because its the only way you're paying for anything.

[randys1]

2. Which is why universal health care MUST be created and NOW

Jesus, think about it.

For political spite and to hold on to their racism, these rightwing assholes are willing to kill their constituents

[strategery blunder]

3. I think legislators did have that foresight

but expected that the law would have either been struck down entirely (the most vocal constitutional argument against it at the time was against the individual mandate to purchase a private product simply for existing) or upheld. The Medicaid opt-out that SCOTUS carved out was not something easily foreseeable, as legal scholars at the time seemed divided on whether the law would be upheld or not, but I don't ever remember reading predictions that the courts would make Medicaid expansion optional as presumably Medicaid had either been found constitutional in the past or never had its constitutionality tested.

Since SCOTUS did something no one (or damn close to no one) expected wrt Medicaid, of course the law didn't account for that as it envisioned the people currently shut out of the healthcare system would be eligible for the expanded Medicaid that the GOP refused to expand in states that it controls. And it's not like Republicans would ever be interested in making such a fix, as they simply wanted to undermine ACA by any way possible to make the black president look bad.

[Shandris]

4. You do make a fair point I hadn't considered about all-or-nothing.

Its why it always seemed so odd to me, that they couldn't foresee it. But that explanation makes a heck of a lot of sense, too, and I can't really see anything off about it.

What's weird is that it isn't really undermining ACA -at all-, and everyone can see that. It's like...well, your username actually describes it perfectly. It seems like a blunder of enormous consequence. I just hope they PAY the consequences!

[moondust]

5. I'm waiting

for somebody to file a wrongful death suit against these GOP death panels.