With the recent fear-from-gays attacks from the Georgetown GOP on Vida Miller, here’s something to be really scared of – and Republicans control the outcome...
More than 656,000 people, or 15 percent of all South Carolinians, could lose access to their doctors and prescription drugs if state lawmakers refuse to play by rules laid out by the federal government for health care.
Advocates said Monday that if the state follows the directives laid out in a scathing letter from its most powerful lawmaker, it faces denying families and children — many of them the newly poor — health care coverage and a loss of $4 billion in federal money.
Now, how many of you so-called Republicans out there depend on this? Be truthful. You know who you are. I have actually seen one here locally who just loves Republicans applying for Medicaid this year. If you’re not outwardly open about it, then how is your Party supposed to take care of you? And, while you’re figuring out how to tell these Republicans that you actually live on such services, thank a Democrat – because they are doing their best to make sure you keep them.
Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, told Emma Forkner, the director of the state Health and Human Services Department, that when the money provided by the state for Medicaid is gone, the insurance program for the poor must simply stop providing services. Cash from the federal government requires a state match.
The Sept. 29 letter is the latest example of the push back from South Carolina politicians to the new health care law. In South Carolina, it is expected to provide nearly 500,000 more people with health care coverage. The expanded coverage is projected to cost the state nearly $1 billion over the next decade, even with the federal government covering at least 90 percent of the cost.
Those Republicans are sneaky. The Georgetown GOP won’t tell local voters that with all those tax cuts they benefit from, the state cannot match funds because they don’t have them. Taxing provides revenue and when you want this state to be a retirement home, who cares about Medicaid – or any other tax-provided service.
Jeff Stensland, director of communications for the Health and Human Services Department, said the ultimate consequence of the loss of federal cash would mean 80 percent of the people on Medicaid would lose coverage, or roughly 656,000 of the 820,000 adults and children.
Go ahead, people. Vote yourselves out of government services. Just as long as gays can’t marry.
(Correspondence between Sen. Glenn McConnell and HHS Director Emma Forkner) 14-page PDF