Campaign Action
This is what the Affordable Care Act was all about. It's what Medicaid expansion, a key part of the law, is all about. The results in Louisiana which expanded two years ago when Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards came into office.
In the two years since Louisiana expanded its Medicaid health care program, more than 400 women enrolled have been diagnosed with breast cancer and are receiving treatment.
Nearly 8,000 adults have had precancerous colon polyps removed, and another 330 are being treated for newly diagnosed colon cancer.
More than 57,000 people are receiving mental health treatment, and more than 21,000 people have received substance abuse treatment.
You can't count out of those tens of thousands how many lives have been saved in two years but with numbers like that, you know it's at least in the hundreds if not thousands. Which is the point. "This is about saving people's lives," as Louisiana's Health Secretary Dr. Rebekah Gee told The Advocate. More than 477,000 people who were uninsured in Louisiana now have coverage and because of that coverage, have received lifesaving care.
All Louisiana Republicans see—like Republicans everywhere—is money being spent on what they consider an undeserving population. In fact, one Republican is considering challenging Bel Edwards for re-election on Medicaid expansion alone. "The governor's decision to expand Medicaid without any consideration for the cost of doing so has grown the cost of health care in Louisiana at the expense of other important priorities," says Sen. Sharon Hewitt from Slidell. That brought a stinging rebuke from the governor, who nailed it. "Maybe if she doesn't want working poor people to have health care she should just say it."
That's the simple reality. Republicans don't want poor people—whether they're working or not—to have health care. Or adequate food. Or shelter. Or financial security in their old age. If they've proven anything in the evolution of their party, culminating in Trump, it's that.