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Medicaid Tag

The Supreme Court delivered a blow to the pro-life movement when it decided not to hear cases from Louisiana and Kansas that would allow the states to block Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding. From The Washington Examiner:
Planned Parenthood will continue to receive Medicaid funding in Louisiana and Kansas after the Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear cases in which the states sought to stop the organization from participating in the program. The Supreme Court's decision not to take up the case leaves intact lower court decisions that allowed Planned Parenthood to continue to receive Medicaid funding.

Republicans have gained historic electoral wins across the board in the past eight years, and one of the driving issues behind these victories has been their repeated promise to repeal ObamaCare. In case anyone's forgotten, the initial outcry from voters was first to reject and then, once it was passed in the middle of the night, to repeal ObamaCare. It was the Democrats who started the "what will you replace it with?" narrative.  Suddenly, the mantra became "repeal and replace," but the American public didn't want ObamaCare.  On principle.  And we didn't want it "replaced" with some other central planning disaster. And we still don't.

I've been blogging about the mess that is my home state of Illinois and just as I thought...it managed to find a way to make things worse. Illinois legislators cannot agree on a budget. It closed the "fiscal year $6 billion in the red." The state also has "unpaid bills to state contractors and vendors that's reached about $14.5 billion and roughly $130 billion in unfunded pension liabilities." S&P downgraded the state's credit rating to a step above junk. Then the state's GOP leader resigned on Friday. A judge has ordered Illinois to pay $293 million towards Medicaid bills just as the state entered its THIRD FISCAL YEAR without a budget.

The ObamaCare Medicaid expansion is a horrible deal for low income Americans; it's also where a large number of "newly covered" Americans get their new coverage. Not only does the expansion include "automatic" enrollment in Medicaid through ObamaCare even if it's not wanted, but expanding Medicaid to slightly higher income levels includes many who have managed to acquire a home or other assets.  Their home and assets, however, go to pay for their Medicaid bills after they die.  In essence, then, Medicaid functions as a loan from the federal government just as it always has, but because the income level has been raised, more Medicaid recipients than ever will have their assets seized to cover the cost of their Medicaid expenses. Despite this, some GOP governors are fighting their own party to keep the Medicaid expansion in their states.

Well, we can cross "Use Bible to Justify Government Subsidized Entitlement Expansion" off the 2016 presidential bingo card. In a video published Tuesday, Ohio Governor and Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich offered to buy Bibles for those opposed to Medicaid expansion.