{"id":23701,"date":"2016-08-29T12:09:17","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T19:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=23701"},"modified":"2016-08-29T12:09:17","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T19:09:17","slug":"goal-50-blue-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/08\/29\/goal-50-blue-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Goal: 50 Blue States"},"content":{"rendered":"

When a Presidential election year becomes focused in an individual, who is thoroughly evil to the core, it’s far too easy to lose sight of the fact that Trump is nothing more than a an unfiltered reflection of Republican policies and values. In reality, there are Republicans at every level of government who are just as cruel, making every red state an open wound in need of repair.  Fortunately, we have Paul Krugman to point out such things.<\/font><\/p>\n

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<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"0829medicaid\"Something terrible has happened to pregnant women in Texas: their mortality rate has doubled in recent years, and is now comparable to rates in places like Russia or Ukraine<\/strong>. Although researchers into this disaster are careful to say that it can\u2019t be attributed to any one cause, the death surge does coincide<\/a> with the state\u2019s defunding of Planned Parenthood, which led to the closing of many clinics. And all of this should be seen against the general background of Texas policy, which is extremely hostile toward anything that helps low-income residents.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an important civics lesson here. While many people are focused on national politics, with reason \u2014 one sociopath in the White House can ruin your whole day \u2014 many crucial decisions are taken at the state and local levels. If the people we elect to these offices are irresponsible, cruel, or both, they can do a lot of damage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is especially true when it comes to health care. Even before the Affordable Care Act went into effect, there was wide variation in state policies, especially toward the poor and near-poor. Medicaid has always been a joint federal-state program, in which states have considerable leeway about whom to cover. States with consistently conservative governments generally offered benefits<\/a> to as few people as the law allowed, sometimes only to adults with children in truly dire poverty. States with more liberal governments extended benefits much more widely. These policy differences were one main reason for a huge divergence in the percentage of the population without insurance, with Texas consistently coming in first in that dismal ranking.<\/p>\n

And the gaps have only grown wider since Obamacare went into effect, for two reasons. First, the Supreme Court made the federally-funded expansion of Medicaid, a crucial part of the reform, optional at the state level. This should be a no-brainer: If Washington is willing to provide health insurance to many of your state\u2019s residents \u2014 and in so doing pump dollars into your state\u2019s economy \u2014 why wouldn\u2019t you say yes? But 19 states<\/a>, Texas among them, are still refusing free money, denying health care to millions.<\/p>\n

Beyond this is the question of whether states are trying to make health reform succeed. California \u2014 where Democrats are firmly in control, thanks to the GOP\u2019s alienation of minority voters \u2014 shows how it\u2019s supposed to work: The state established its own health exchange<\/a>, carefully promoting and regulating competition, and engaged in outreach to inform the public and encourage enrollment. The result has been dramatic success in holding down costs and reducing the number of uninsured<\/strong>… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From <NY Times<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

I’ve been using the joke, "Please don’t Californicate Oregon!" for around thirty five years.  That needs to be updated: "Please Californicate Texas!!!"<\/font><\/p>\n

Every Republican in office is<\/font><\/h1>\n

one Republican too many!<\/font><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When a Presidential election year becomes focused in an individual, who is thoroughly evil to the core, it’s far too easy to lose sight of the fact that Trump is nothing more than a an unfiltered reflection of Republican policies and values. In reality, there are Republicans at every level of government who are just […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}