Why I love Medicare & Medicaid and hate the #GOPwaronthepoor

I'm going to make this as simple and personal as possible in the hopes that maybe someone out there will understand just what the government can do and has done for poor people in this country, instead of picturing government as just aiding and abetting a bunch of free loading welfare queens.

My nephew was born about 14 years ago. When he was born to his teen mom the plan was to place him on his grandmothers health insurance, insurance she received from her employer. He was born with a hypo plastic left heart, which necessitated a heart transplant at less than a month old. However, the private insurer decided that his birth defect was a 'pre-existing condition' and therefore they would not cover the operation and any subsequent health issues.

Medicaid stepped in and paid for the operation and has paid for the millions of dollars worth of care he has received since then. I was reminded of this on Friday as he went in for his regular check up, where they detected an arrhythmia and immediately sent him into exploratory surgery to find out what was causing it. (Nothing was found by the way.) All of this care was provided by Medicaid and wonderful doctors and such. None of this care is provided by private insurance. If it was up to private insurers he would have just been left to die peacefully as a baby.

Now the G.O.P. has passed a budget plan that, among other things, wants to change the funding of medicaid entirely, making it a block grant to the states to spend how they wish. This would effectively end medicaid for large swaths of poor and disabled people when states run out of funds (like now). Leaving it up to private insurers to supposedly take up the slack, which they clearly will not do.

That is the G.O.P. response to the Affordable Care Act. Among other things the Affordable Care Act has made what that private insurer did illegal, they can no longer refuse coverage based on a 'pre-existing condidtion'. That is the type of law that the G.O.P. Congress voted to repeal.

I think you can't get any more simple contrast: One party wants to help poor people and protect them from the whims of private companies, and be there when there is a need for a safety net. The other party would leave things entirely in the hands of private insurers and just let the market do what it's supposed to do, and if that means that poor people don't get coverage, or their coverage falls short or fall in a loophole, that's just too bad.