You would think that fiscally responsible people, which conservatives proclaim themselves to be, would have jumped at the chance to receive billions of dollars from the federal government in order to help the poor have access to health care, right?
Well, no, because those same fiscal conservatives are so filled with hate and loathing for Obamacare that they'd actually love to screw every poor person in the country so they die faster. In Michigan, there has been a huge battle between the budget-balancers and the purists over the Medicaid expansion provided by the Affordable Care Act, which was at least partially settled by lawmakers yesterday.
After doing battle with the likes of the Koch/DeVos-funded Mackinac Center over the expansion, it squeaked through after a 'compromise' was struck with regard to certain hospital payments and maximums.
For all their talk about fiscal conservatism, these corporatist Republicans have shown that they are, in fact, hypocritical liars. If they truly cared about saving money for the state, they would have been falling all over themselves to pass Medicaid expansion. Instead, they have delayed and delayed until they have squandered millions upon millions of dollars that could have been spent providing affordable health insurance to people with jobs that don’t pay enough for them to purchase it. Even in their final vote, the refused to give the legislation “immediate effect” as they have done for the hugely vast majority of every other bill they have passed. One last jerk move on their way out the door, so to speak. This, too, will cost our state millions of dollars thanks to the delay. Governor Snyder’s utter failure in leadership on this issue is a clear sign that he does not have the credentials to run our state.
Michigan Republicans act like they are kowtowing to the tea party but, ultimately, they are genuflecting before their corporate puppet masters. It’s the corporate interests and their front groups like the Mackinac Center that fuel the vapid fires of the tea party zealots who spend their days making phone calls and visits to Republicans legislators to push the corporatist agenda. There is nothing tyrannical about providing affordable health care to Americans but you’d never know it if you listened to the tea party. And, lest you think the tea party is somehow politically “independent”, just consider that in a defeated email sent in the wee hours of this morning, the Tea Party of West Michigan exhorted their readers to contact House members who voted FOR Medicaid expansion earlier this year to ask them to change their vote when the senate-passed bill goes back to conference committee. There was not one Democrat among the list of Representatives they listed.
That highlighted part there about "immediate effect"? According to Eclectablog, that means the Medicaid expansion will not actually take effect until April 1, 2014, which means the state will lose $7 million dollars per day for the first quarter of 2014.
How fiscally conservative of them.
