This morning's news reports that Florida Governor Rick Scott and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana will prevent their states from participating in the expanded Medicaid program. Scott's edict is to the detriment of of hundreds of thousands (if not a million) Floridians. About 4 million people in Florida lack health insurance, a quarter of who could have been helped by the Medicaid expansion made possible by the A.C.A.
That made me wonder how many other boneheaded Republican Governors backed up by Republican Legislatures with brutally austere policies will follow Scott and Jindal's despicable leads?
Scott vows he won’t implement Affordable Care Act
BY TIA MITCHELL
Scott told Fox News he believes the law should be repealed, hopefully by a new president elected in November. But even if that doesn’t happen, he said, Florida will not set up a health-insurance exchange or participate in an expansion of Medicaid.
“We’re not going to implement Obamacare in Florida,” Scott told Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren on Friday night. “We’re not going to expand Medicaid because we’re going to do the right thing. We’re not going to do the exchange.”
Scott said other Republican governors agreed their focus should be fighting the law and supporting Romney, including Rick Perry of Texas, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
“Here in Louisiana, look, we refused to set up the exchange. We’re not
going to start implementing Obamacare,” Jindal told POLITICO. “We have
not applied for the grants, we have not accepted many of these dollars, we are not implementing the exchanges, we don’t think it makes any sense to implement Obamacare in Louisiana.”
I expect other doctrinaire Republican Governors beside Rick Perry and and Scott Walker to look this A.C.A. gift horse in the mouth, then tell their state's citizens that they will have to crawl not ride as well. The gulf between low tax, low service states, and progressive states that promote the common good continues to widen drastically.