Rhetoric Race and Religion
In a recent CNN online article on its “Belief” blog, (posted here) a scandal about the Affordable Care Act that is rarely written about was explored:
When people talk about the Affordable Care Act, most focus on the troubled launch of its website. But another complication of the law has received less attention: a “coverage gap” that will leave nearly 5 million poor Americans without health care, according to a Kaiser Health Foundation study.
The coverage gap was created when 25 states refused to accept the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare. The people who fall into this gap make too much money to qualify for Medicaid and not enough to qualify for Obamacare subsidies in their state insurance exchanges. If they lived elsewhere, they would probably get insurance. But because they live in a state that refused the new health care law, they likely will remain among the nation’s uninsured poor after Obamacare coverage kicks in come January.
In short, Red States adopting the total GOP assault on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) refused to accept federal funda for expanding Medicaid eligibility, leaving many of their citizens without coverage that they could receive under the act. But the Republican politics of damning anything associated with the ACA as the work of the devil has left many white and minority Americans in healthcare Hell.
Ironically, CNN notes that “most of the people who fall into the coverage gap live in the Bible Belt, a 14-state region in the South stretching from North Carolina to Texas and Florida.” Yet, and this is why this GOP political act of condemning individuals, families and children to death or bankruptcy becomes relevant to religion.
Read the rest here
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