Governors Refusing Medicaid Expansion just Fine with Hospital Closings, Loss of 5,000 jobs…blame Affordable Care Act

You can just hear low information conservative voters blaming “ObamaCare” for closing hospitals and killing 5,000 jobs all over the country, instead of blaming the Republicans governors who were well aware of the possibility when they turned down Medicaid expansion.

Heck, the hospitals said it would happen. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker will actually spend up to $73 million to subsidize hospitals for uncompensated losses. That's taxpayer money. His zombie followers probably don’t even know their footing the bill because of Walker.

So big surprise today in Bloomberg News:

At least five public hospitals closed this year and many more are scaling back services, mostly in states where Medicaid wasn’t expanded. Hospitals have dismissed at least 5,000 employees across the country since June, mostly in states that haven’t expanded the joint state-federal Medicaid health program for the poor as anticipated under the U.S. health overhaul known as Obamacare … medical care would be balanced by more low-income patients being covered by Medicaid. 

Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, said governors who chose not to expand Medicaid are to blame for the hospital closures. The administration “strongly encourages” states to expand Medicaid, which would “dramatically reduce the amount of unpaid bills that hospitals are left with,” Peters said in an e-mail.

Remember the ACA would pay 100 percent of Medicaid expansion for three years, phasing down to 90 percent after that. Yet some governors are still using the “the price tag is too high” in the dystopian future they foresee a GOP congress and president repeal the ACA.

Georgia’s Republican Governor, Nathan Deal, has said the state can’t afford to expand Medicaid. Even though the federal government says it will initially cover the costs, the price tag will be too high in the future, he said.

Losing 5,000 Jobs, Jobs, Jobs …thanks Republicans. Is Sen. Mitch McConnell blissfully ignorant of the losses?

WaPo: Mitch McConnell was pressed on the Medicaid expansion — which is responsible for 85 percent of new signups in Kentucky — and on the benefits the law will extend to people. He didn’t have a very good answer. The Courier-Journal reported it this way:

McConnell took umbrage at the argument that the numbers in Kentucky add up to a successful program.

“Well look, if I went out here on the street today [and said], ‘You guys want free health care?’ I expect you’d have a lot of signups,” he said. “People signing up for something that is free” is the only thing about Obamacare in Kentucky that could be considered successful.

Yes, people will make sure they live in poverty to get "free health care."