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Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who has made hating "Obamacare" his raison d'etre, really did not want to accept the Medicaid expansion policy in the Affordable Care Act. When the Supreme Court made the policy optional, Scott was among the first to announce that he would ignore the offer. When the Obama administration tried to work with him on the issue, the far-right governor got caught lying about Medicaid in order to prevent its expansion.
But in the end, the Florida Republican just couldn't figure out a way to ignore the arithmetic.
A bitter critic of Obamacare, Florida Governor Rick Scott announced a surprising change of opinion on Wednesday, saying he would back an expansion of Medicaid in the state. The Tampa Bay Times called it an "amazing policy reversal." Scott had derided the program as a "job killer" and said last summer that the state would opt out of the expansion, a key part of President Obama's health-care reform. [...]
"It is not a white flag of surrender to government-run health care," Scott said. "While the federal government is committed to paying 100% of the cost of new people in Medicaid, I cannot, in good conscience, deny the uninsured access to care."
Scott is now the seventh Republican governor to accept Medicaid expansion -- as recently as a few months ago, there were zero -- but his decision arguably has the biggest impact. Indeed, given Florida's size and population, Scott has, with this one decision, cleared the way for bringing health care access to 1.3 million Americans, expanding the reach of Obamacare to new heights.
It's a three-year commitment -- Scott is apparently looking at this as a trial run, with strings attached -- but it's nevertheless a remarkable change in direction for the unpopular Republican, who's spent the last few years bragging about his unyielding opposition to President Obama's health care law and everything in it.
And whether Scott intended this or not, it also ups the ante for other states, most notably those with Republican governors.
To reiterate a point from earlier in the month, the way the Affordable Care Act is structured, Medicaid expansion is a great deal for states, and should be a no-brainer for governors who care about lowering health care costs, insuring low-income families, improving state finances, and helping state hospitals.
The only reasons Republican governors would balk is if (a) they're afraid of their party's base; (b) they plan to run for president and don't want this to be used against them in a primary; (c) they're bad at math; or (d) some combination therein.
For Scott, a Tea Party champion, the calculation led to an answer he couldn't ignore. What's more, note that in his statement, he said he can't deny the uninsured access to care "in good conscience." This, too, increases the pressure on his fellow Republican governors -- Scott is effectively saying only heartless, callous bastards would punish the poor this way.
Also, keep an eye on the larger trend of the Florida Republican trying to moderate his image in advance of his re-election bid next year. Scott is one of the nation's least-popular governors, but he seems eager to improve his standing -- by moving to the left. The governor recently reversed course on voting restrictions, he's proposed raising teacher salaries, and now he's expanding Obamacare.
Apparently, Republicans implicitly realize that the way to become more popular in 2013 is to move away from the right and closer to the mainstream -- which necessarily means embracing more progressive views.
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I am glad to see this. Hopefully the other governors will soon get on board. No American should not have access to medical care.
At what cost? There is just not enough money to support healthcare for all. You see it in Europe, Venezuela, and Canada. There is just not enough money. Your statement is incorrect, every American has access to healthcare. Hospitals are required to pay for it. The problem with the left is that everybody wants healthcare, They just expect someone else to pay for it. If you are so gung ho about it, get your checkbook out and pay for it. Don't force your beliefs on other people.
["There is just not enough money to support healthcare for all."]
This is, of course, a blatant lie. There is more than enough money for it. Even if your lies about Canada et.al. weren't lies, the fact remains that the U.S. is the wealthiest nation in the world. No boast, simple fact, we are literally the wealthiest nation in the world. And since it has also been proven that true universal health care gets better results for lower costs than our current system, we would actually end up spending less on health care than we spend right now.
The problem isn't that there isn't enough money. The problem is that heartless monsters like you don't care about anyone except yourselves. You're just not willing to own up to it, hence your lies and pathetic excuses about "not enough money".
No, all Americans do have access to medical care and have has so for decades. The issue is about who pays and how much. I hate it when you people try to confuse the two issues.
["No, all Americans do have access to medical care and have has so for decades."]
You know perfectly well that you're lying. People with chronic illnesses like diabetes or cancer, who are too poor to afford health insurance, do not have access to medical care. YOU KNOW THAT PERFECTLY WELL. You're just too much of a heartless monster to care.
Worth noting that Rick Scott's price for expanding Medicaid was to privatize the program, expanding opportunities for the sort of high-dollar bilking of public monies that made him rich in the first place. The only thing stronger than a Republican's hatred of the poor is the unquenchable desire to make a profit by ripping off consumers and the public at large.
See: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/02/20/1617971...
This. Don't know why lefty bloggers are thinking he caved -- he just decided to scam the system more. Duh.
Typical idiots, you leftwingers are delusional. Study after study proves that conservatives give more to charities than liberals. Liberals never want to spend their own money, they are only generous with other people's money. YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A BUNCH OF HYPOCRITES. Liberals only want poor people to rely on government so that they can be controlled and used as pawns.
If you have nothing but name calling, go home troll. If you haven't noticed, this is a civilized blog.
No, this is definitely caving. He's a hero to the teabaggers, and teabaggers burn with hatred over Obamacare because Faux "News" has told them to. The fact that Scotty has betrayed them for personal profit, and has used good sense and compassion as his excuses, is a huge cave that will damage his political future.
Expect a vicious primary and lots of personal attacks against him.
The only reason that Rick Scott is doing as little as he is to comply with the PPACA is that he's up for re-election next year. He knows he's in trouble, and he's trying to run, not move gradually, back, to the center. Scott is hoping that the voters' memories are so short that they'll forget about what he did in his first two years as governor.
Math is a bit harder to attack than science, but certain people drinking certain teas will no doubt try and try to refute the math with some sort of shiny object - just give Murdoch's crew a little more time, and the Yellow couch will begin to shine in new diabolical hues! -Kevo
Kevo , I admire your sturdy reliance on the commonality in sensible attacking . It is to be hoped that the disease in the root sense of 'commonality in sensible attacking' tends towards common sense , rather than towards the military intelligence pornography of bombing it into heaven .
Keep thinking about President Obama’s talk about young men being fathers. But President Obama really needs to consider what his ideal thinking of trying to encourage men to be fathers. Don’t know what he has said to those young men behind closed doors, but certainly hope he has said the right things about being a responsible parent. Because young boys learn too well from men and what men will say and do. And depending on what those supposed fathers will be telling and doing to their boys depends very much to what kind of man he will be. Too many times, it has been seen where supposed good fathers have really just abused their wives and children. It is easy to say a man should be a responsible father, but at the same time in many many cases it was not even worth having a father around and has just caused more problems in the world. And in many cases a woman is really much better off not having that father around to just allow more screwed up abused kids that will repeat that insane pattern. Men can squeal, cry, make excuses, and complain that they are unjustly blamed for all these terrible things that happen, but it is men themselves that have been causing all these problems throughout history. If anything, it is time men stop making excuses for why these awful things happen and start fixing the problems men have caused. We don’t need to go back to a screwed up mess that men have caused in the past; we need the right solutions to finally fix those problems in the future. You go forward, not backwards.
do you wake up in the morning with fresh completely off-topic posts or do they just pop into your head.
Deb
Did you learn to spell and write grammatically correct sentences in the dark? Or, do you represent a four year old who has learned to blame dad and all men for everything from mommy?
Please go back to school to learn about sentence structure and thought grouping in paragraphs.
Please stop spreading hateful things and stop blaming others for your lack of intelligent thoughts.
What is this typical men making excuses again. Best to take a good review of history and who was doing what. Perhaps some hypocritical narrow-minded men. Ah yes that's it women are always made the excuse for men's errors and mistakes. Let's stay with the intelligent talk now and find some good solutions for world problems other than oh let's go start another war so we can murder a whole mess of people, because we don't like what they are doing and oh those uppity women are talking again and should be silenced.
Are you listening, Governor Corbett, you worthless piece of... well, you know what I'm trying to say.
This just made the 2014 PA governor's race a bit more interesting. Still holding on to the hope that Corbett's failure to act more quickly in the Sandusky investigation will come back to bite him on the ass.
...and Rick "Good Ol' Boy" Perry.
I'm curious what the tea folks will make out of it:
THE USURPATION COMPLEX
The goal toward which the pseudoconservative mentality strives—diffusedly
and semiconsciously—is to establish a dictatorship of the economically strongest
group. This is to be achieved by means of a mass movement, one which
promises security and privileges to the so-called "little man" (that is to say,
worried members of the middle and lower middle class who still cling to
their status and their supposed independence), if they join with the right
people at the right time. This wish appears throughout pseudoconservative
ideology in mirrored reflection. Government by representation is accused of
perverting democracy."
Adorno - The Authoritarian Personality, Studies in Prejudice Series, 1949
I'm pretty sure they'll add Scott to their list of usurpers.
Rick Scott and the other dicks in his party need to be exposed to public ridicule. They will shrink in the light of day. Scott will continue to be a dick but will be much more private in the future.
A private dick indeed!
While I congratulate Scott for doing the right thing let's hold that "Heavenly choir" from singing his praise just yet. Didn't Scott get fined for over-billing medicare/medicaid when he was in his "private company"? And in the end if this "governor" bid doesn't work out, ostensibly he'll go right back to over-charging "the government" - cause leopards don't change their spots. While it sounds as though he's "embracing" more moderate policies - raises for teachers and acting as though he's got a conscious - I wouldn't bet the farm just yet. Just remember it was Bobby Jindal that told the GOTP to "stop being the stupid party" and then turned right around and did quite a few stupid things - this "change of heart" by Scott surely won't last that long......
Daily Kos-July 3, 2012..... "Rick Scott on Medicaid expansion: If I can't steal it, Florida does not want it." I guess it took him this long to figure out a way to rip it off like he did back in the 90's!
What concerns me is that Scott is attributing this reversal, in part, to witnessing the illness and death of his own mother recently. I don't know if he gave any more specific details than that, but if that played a role, it's a rather stunning admission of a lack of concern and imagination -- he didn't much know or care about how health care affected the lives of real damn people, until it happened to be someone close to him.
Seriously? The futures of hundreds of thousands of Scott's fellow Floridians depend on the random and arbitrary chance of the governor's mother getting sick, so he could finally "understand" what's at stake? Abysmal.
Well, color me surprised, is he actually putting the people first instead of his rich buddies?
No. He's putting his own re-election first.
Huge wads of federal money for Medicaid is very persuasive even with Republicans. Only the ideologues are turning the money down. But that will not last very long because the health care industries are very powerful even on the state level.
On that proverbial judgement day....you know, the one where we're all standing in that great waiting room in the sky awaiting further instructions....or maybe just a simple up or down vote.... well, if they ask if anyone has any questions of the Exalted Kahuna beyond the waiting room door, mine will be a simple one; however, one I've never gotten an acceptable answer to: How is it that so many supposed middle/lower middle class people support and vote for the likes of Rick Scott/Rick Perry, knowing full-well that these jerks have no intentions of concerning themselves with their interests?
We must care for each other. Go to your local homeless shelter, study the mental and behavioral processes that contribute to acute and crohnic poverty. Tune in to real human needs.
Buerre Says:
"This is supposed to be a democracy! Government has NOTHING to do with it!"
Keep in mind folks, all this debt we are racking up to make our lives better, we have no ability nor intention of paying back. When we are dead and gone this debt will be owed by our children. How fair is that? Forty years from now how do you think our kids will view us? I doubt they'll be calling us the greatest generation.
Why don't you ask all the Republicans that racked it up?
They'll probably be wondering why we fought two wars on credit and needed government to solve capitalist-fueled problems.
If they are around that is, we haven't really addressed climate change, which hangs far more over future generations than short-term debt issued at very low rates.
One of the biggest winners of the re election of president Obama and Obamacare surviving was HCA founded?(he was definitely ceo)by Gov Scott and largely owned by Bain Capital
As much as I want everyone to have good affordable healthcare I can't help but notice how many doctors have left both Medicare and Medicaid in the past 2yrs. Expanding Medicaid isn't going to do much good if you can't find a doctor. Nobody seems to want to talk about this side of the conversation.