Are Republican Governors Ready to Kill Tens of Thousands to Placate the Tea Party?

 

Rob: Now are you aware of the kinds of programs that are available and what is going on in those states? How would you expect this to affect the people in terms of the results of your study?

 

Dr. Sommers:  Well, those are states that have some very different programs in place. Wisconsin, for instance has traditionally had a fairly generous Medicaid programs and has actually covered some of the adults we're talking about, whereas Texas and Florida have not done so. South Carolina has not done that. And there are large numbers of low income, uninsured people in Texas and Florida in particular. These are states that have some of the highest concentrations of people who would potentially benefit from a Medicaid expansion. So, I do think that those states really have, in a lot of ways, some of the greatest potential gain by signing up and choosing not to expand Medicaid would, on the other hand, have some of the greatest missed opportunities to save lives for their low income population.

 

Rob: So, of the states that have spoken about not accepting the ObamaCare, the ACA, Florida and Texas are more likely to be ones where there will be a higher number of deaths that could be attributable to not having the insurance available to the poor?

 

Dr. Sommers:  Yeah, if you take that our findings would work--would show a similar impact in Texas and Florida, which is, I think a reasonable assumption, then yes, it would be likely that a large number of uninsured people in these states that can't get covered would suffer the adverse health outcomes including higher death rates."

 

 

There's no doubt that we are dealing with statistics here. Dr. Sommers has made it clear, in other interviews, that he cannot state, unequivocally, that there was a causal connection. But you've read what he says. People will most likely die in states where Republican Governors refuse to accept 90% funding for expanded coverage for the poor.

 

The Rght has talked about death panels. Maybe we should be talking about Killer governors, or Death governors. Frank Luntz, the GOP's language meister can tease out, with focus groups, which is more or less detrimental. Then we can talk about the poison tea party policies, or Death Sentence for the Poor Tea Partiers.

 

There's another consideration too. In Florida, there's another effect from allowing 6000 people under the defined, close to poverty lines to die. They won't vote. There's no need to require them to have voter IDs.  Okay. Maybe I'm going a bit over the top on this one. But bear with me. If  Governor Rick Scott in Florida, Rick Perry in Texas, and governors in South Carolina, Wisconsin and elsewhere actually go ahead with their threats to refuse the expanded coverage the ACA brings, over a four year period, Florida will have taken almost 23,000 voters out of the picture. Nationwide, if enough Republican state governors line up with Scott and Perry, over 300,000 close to poverty potential voters could be permanently taken off the voter rolls.

 

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