GOP To Americans: Drop Dead
The House Republican budget plan that passed yesterday is indisputable proof they do not care about the lives of anyone who isn't wealthy.
I could not help but be reminded of this moment sixteen years ago watching the medieval Republican budget plan pass the House yesterday.
Alan Grayson was a firebrand congressman from Orlando who did not care about the niceties of Washington, and as a freshman debating the health care reform proposals, he said that the Republican Party’s plan was:
Don’t Get Sick
If You Do Get Sick…
DIE QUICKLY.
Blunt, maybe a bit unfair, but on the whole, remarkably prescient. The budget plan that the House passed by a single vote last night is the biggest middle finger possible from the Party of Trump to every single American who relies upon any safety net program. I have written before about how these cuts would take a wrecking ball to my brother’s care, and he is one of 72 million people who would be affected, along with over seven million CHIP recipients. Let’s have a quick look at the enrollment numbers, shall we?
Red states comprise 27,978,740 Medicaid receipients.
Purple (swing states) make up 12,695,133 Medicaid receipients.
That is 40,673,873 out of a total 79,308,002 Medicaid receipients, or 51.28% of the total number of receipients. Medicaid is not partisan. It is not red state or blue state. It is across the divide, people with disabilities, impoverished adults and children, people who can’t get insured through normal means, people requiring long-term care. It affects everyone. Gutting Medicaid does not remove the burden of care—the Hippocratic oath requires doctors to do no harm and emergency rooms are still required to treat patients, insurance or not.
What it will do is increase our costs. The cost of unpaid healthcare bills for the poor will lead to those of us with living wages having to pay higher costs, which will then lead to increased medical premiums, and an overall inflationary cycle for care. Worse still, the impact to preventative health will be massive—increasing the death toll in a country whose cost of living and healthcare costs have driven down the birthrate.
The MAGA crowd thinks that if you ban abortion enough, if you ban birth control, you’ll increase the birth rate. Forced-birth, as Amanda Marcotte called it years ago, is not a solution. Lack of health care and nutritional aid will just increase the mortality of young children. We are on a fast track to becoming a third world nation, all so Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the other billionaires can get another tax cut when they already pay a smaller percentage than the average American. It’s immoral, disgusting, and entirely expected from a party whose only operating principle is undying loyalty to a billionaire huckster named Donald Trump.