Sebelius: Guvs Against Medicaid Are 'Playing Politics' With People's Lives

[ProSense]

Sebelius: Guvs Against Medicaid Are 'Playing Politics' With People's Lives

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday slammed Republican governors who are ideologically opposed to expanding Medicaid in their states for putting their constituents' health at risk.

"Unfortunately, what I think we have in a large case is governors playing politics with people's lives and people's health," Sebelius said in an interview with HuffPost Live...Sebelius listed Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida as states that harmed black residents in particular by refusing to accept federal money to expand Medicaid coverage. And in Texas, she pointed out, almost one in four residents have no insurance at all.

"It has nothing to do with the constituents that live in that state. It's really about his own ideological battle with the president of the United States," Sebelius said of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's (R) refusal to expand the program.

Perry has compared expanding Medicaid in Texas to "putting 1,000 more people on the Titanic," even though estimates show almost a million uninsured Texans could have benefitted from the extended coverage.

- more -

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sebelius_governors_not_expanding_medicaid_playing_with_peoples_lives

Georgia:

How One Governor Is Trying To Avoid Responsibility For Denying Health Care To 600,000 Poor People
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024558127

[ProSense]

1. Kick! n/t

[Proud Liberal Dem]

2. Sums it up nicely

"It has nothing to do with the constituents that live in that state. It's really about his own ideological battle with the president of the United States," Sebelius said of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's (R) refusal to expand the program. "

However, she really could have been talking about, well, just about any Republican and any issue since Obama was elected POTUS.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

3. yes. Dems and their OWN constituents need to make them pay for such criminality

[Cali_Democrat]

4. GOPers don't mind if people die...because they hate that black guy in the White House

More:

Meet Israel Hilton, a Texan with terminal cancer who can't get Medicaid thanks to Rick Perry

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024494390

[ProSense]

5. Republicans are trying to

terrorize Americans: deny access to health care, legalize discrimination and trample women's rights.

The 'Religious Liberty' Campaign May Be Backfiring For Conservatives

In 2012, the conservative “campaign for religious liberty” looked like a smart and possibly winning strategic gambit. Aimed specifically at the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate, nestled in a broader claim of institutional and individual exemptions from complex and sometimes unpopular laws and regulations, the campaign linked the Conference of U.S. Catholic Bishops with conservative evangelicals and both to the Republican politicians (including presidential candidate Mitt Romney) who made it a new front in both their anti-Obamacare and “family values” messaging.

Some leading Catholic Democrats (e.g., E.J. Dionne) feared it would become a crucial wedge issue. And it gave a nice First Amendment gloss to unseemly culturally reactionary impulses, while providing mainstream respectability to the “constitutional conservative” claim that church-state separation was a threat to faith itself.

Two years later, the “religious liberty” crusade shows signs of backfiring. This very day, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer may veto a bill just passed by a legislature controlled by her own party that provides a broad exemption from discrimination laws to businesses and individuals claiming compliance violates their beliefs. And more generally, an argument that once distracted from the extremist nature of conservative Christian objections to gay rights and reproductive rights is drawing attention to them in a dangerous way.

This began happening first on the contraception coverage front, where the religious objection to the Obamacare mandate had to be justified (in the Hobby Lobby litigation most notably) by the claim that highly effective contraceptive devices (the IUD) and treatments (Plan B and hormonal “patches”) used by millions of women were in fact “abortifacients.”

- more -

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/the-religious-liberty-campaign-may-be-backfiring-for-conservatives