I received a few messages after I shared You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, detailing Missouri Republican House members’ comments on Medicaid Expansion.
One question I was asked: why does the GOP want to hurt their voters?
Well, I thought about that and my answer is that the GOP owns a deep and real fear.
No, (despite what they say in public) the fear is not that giving more people access to health care will break the bank. Even the wildest estimate had expansion costing just a couple of hundred million dollars a year in an almost $35 billion budget. That’s noticeable but not impossible to handle.
Missouri Republicans’ great, dark fear is that Medicaid Expansion will work.
Imagine the conservatives’ horror if a convenience store worker from Lexington goes on TV to say how great it is to get regular care from an endocrinologist for her diabetes. Or, if a Carthage area farm worker tells a reporter how much safer he feels because he’s finally getting monitored for his high blood pressure.
Years ago at Circle Of Concern I remember a client, a grandma who cooked at Boston Market. She carried a list of her many medical issues. One evening (she came in on a Wednesday evening because of her job) she told me her wish: to have a doctor who knew her name.
Yes, she got episodic care at emergency rooms and went, once in a while, to a subsidized clinic halfway across the county. Want she never had was on-going medical support, a doctor who knew her history and worked the steps to get her better.
Think about that. Most of us take for granted having a primary care physician, a medical ‘home,’ year after year. For example, over the past 42 years I’ve had just three primary care physicians. That continuity helped when my heart issues attacked and when I caught Covid late last year. I always had someone who knew me and my health history who worked with me – and cared about me.
Now, Republican members of the Missouri House of Representatives get decent medical coverage as part of their job. I bet they appreciate that access to health care when they catch Covid or break something.
Their fear is that their voters will enjoy the same level access – from a Democratic program brought forth by that Kenyan socialist Barrack Obama – and wonder why they had to wait so long to get Medicaid. That could be embarrassing.
Again, the GOP would shout for joy if Medicaid failed. They fear its success.
Glenn