Republican governors will let people die to make political point

Proving that making a political point is more important to Republicans than anything else, including saving potentially millions of lives, an increasing number of Republican governors are announcing that they'll refuse the Medicaid expansion money from the federal government. Think Progress has been tracking the state's decisions and has found, so far, 10 Republican governors will refuse it, and another 19 are unsure.

That Supreme Court ruled that states could refuse the Medicaid expansion because the law went too far in allowing the government to take all existing Medicaid funding away from the states who refused to participate. Predictably, governors like Florida's Rick Scott, Louisiana's Bobby Jindhal, South Carolina's Nikki Haley and Wisconsin's Scott Walker are all ready to keep millions of people uninsured. They're willing to let their constituents die'hundreds of thousands in some states, millions in total'for their perverted notion of states' rights.
This is, by the way, basically free money they're refusing. The ACA provides 100 percent funding for the expansion in the first three years, 90 percent for the next five. Not taking this money is profoundly immoral, and probably profoundly stupid, too, when all those voters find out the scope of what they're being shut out of. That includes some powerful political forces, most notably hospitals who will have to keep taking on these patients regardless, and have been anxious to start getting their charity care dollars recouped.

And while it's still a little early to know exactly what the public opinion fall-out of the ruling will be, the early indications are that the majority of people want this political fight over the ACA to be over and done with already. Additionally, new CNN polling [pdf] shows that Republicans are fairly narrowly divided (for Republicans, anyway) on this part of the Supreme Court decision, with 48 percent saying it's a good idea to allow states to opt out, but 43 percent opposing that decision. Maybe rank and file Republicans aren't quite as bloodthirsty as the governors they elect. Well, and the people they let into Republican debates.

"Let 'em die" might not be the most effect campaign slogan for Republicans when voters start figuring out what their states will be missing out on.