Republicans in Virginia voted down $2.1 billion in federal aid for Medicaid Expansion. Besides creating around 30,000 jobs for the Virginian economy, this money would have gone to help the hundreds of thousands of uninsured Virginians to get covered under our Medicaid system. The Washington Post did a feature Friday showing one of the many annual Remote Area Clinic events—this one for Virginians, at the Wise Fair Grounds. There were Democratic politicians there, but no Republicans.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who flew out to the clinic Friday morning, had invited Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to join him but said that the Republican leader “politely” declined. McAuliffe, who visits the clinic every year, spent nearly two hours touring it — twice as long as scheduled — and took every opportunity to proclaim that he’s been trying for three years to get the state legislature to agree to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.
This isn’t a new thing. The Republican Party is at odds with the majority of human beings who believe that medical care and health is something that should be a right and not a commodity. Unfortunately, while many people understand this innately, you still have a disconnect between what they want and who they vote for. A woman in the article saves her money up all year, every year, for gas and motel cost—in order to get her teeth pulled. She voted for Trump. But the fact remains, for the people at this clinic, the Affordable Care Act has failed them as well—forget about the fact that medicaid expansion would help many of them.
No relief is in sight for someone like Larry McKnight, who sat in a horse stall at the Wise County Fairgrounds having his shoulder examined. He was among more than a thousand people attending the area’s 18th annual Remote Area Medical clinic, where physicians and dentists dispense free care to those who otherwise have none.
“I really think that they don’t have any clue what’s going on,” McKnight said of political leaders in Washington. “You watch the news and it’s two sides pitted against each other, which in turn just makes them pitted against us, the normal person.”
There is a part of me that wants to yell until I’m blue in the face but we have a traditional media machine that has turned the political sphere into a sports match and the results are the same—people get passionate to a degree but also build up a healthy cynicism for the individuals in elected office. And it isn’t simply a lack of education as similar frustrating statements have been made by people with considerably more means, like Susan Sarandon and Jill Stein. It’s a hands up in the air frustration with how things have evolved over the past 40 years.