Pass the New Hampshire Medicaid Expansion

   There are about 58,000 of our New Hampshire working force aged under-65 earning less than 133% of the federal poverty line who’d better have a working understanding about the latest body blow currently being landed on them by our state Republicans in Concord. In the face of even a modicum of common sense both politically and morally, the GOP in our Senate and House are undermining governor Maggie Hassan’s acceptance of over $2.5 billion in guaranteed federal Medicaid funds, covering the next seven years.

   This is just another hideous example of what America’s Republican Party has sunk to in the past decade, and on a state level mirrors perfectly the logjam existing in Washington D.C., with a GOP that has no interest in furthering the lives of any individual Americans, save for the wealthy and by extension our big businesses. Their war on nearly every demographic group in our nation, which most of us were hoping would end with the re-election of president Barack Obama, is apparently going to continue over the remainder of his final term in office. Women, students, minorities, the elderly and in this case our working poor have been under attack mainly from the Tea Party faction, a group that is proving time and time again that their nomenclature (Taxed Enough Already Party) has very little to do with the extensive national social engineering they really espouse.

   But back to the Granite State. We currently have 137,000 residents enrolled on Medicaid, with the aforementioned  58,000 all set to be added to the rolls on January 1, 2014. The federal funds are already allocated and guaranteed, regardless of what state and national GOP politicians, hate radio and FOX “NEWS” commentators might be telling you. The only thing the governance of each individual state has to do is accept the money.

   But a Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Medicaid Expansion. Since this is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) we’re talking about, an initiative that is necessary to both the health of our citizens and our nation’s economic well-being, it’s being avoided like kryptonite by our state legislature as well as 23 others across the country, including Texas, Louisiana and the Carolinas.  Unlike in New Hampshire, the reason for most of these fund rejections  lies in those states unfortunately having GOP governors, who are all squarely against any Obamacare policy even  benefiting  their own constituents, and are willing to take their chances at the ballot box next election, hoping for enough anti-Obama sentiment to hold onto their jobs (an exception is Texas’ Rick Perry, who has already announced that this will be his last term).

   This 24-state Medicaid blockade was probably to be expected, seeing that a couple days before their motion here the House of Representatives in Washington symbolically voted for the 38th time to repeal Obamacare, which is funding the expansion. This impotent-but-continuous barrage against Obamacare at the national level is the GOP’s explicit approval to right-leaning states to follow suit, despite their actions barring benefits to 17 million workers nationally.

   Maggie Hassan will be calling our Granite State legislature back for an October session, hoping that in the next three months enough pressure can be exerted against the Republicans to ensure a favorable vote at that time. Typically, most of the GOP members are voicing their disapproval of this special session, preferring to kick the problem down the road into the 2014 regular reconvening.

   The most infuriating point of this latest anti-Obama subterfuge by our GOP representatives is that the people who will suffer aren’t on welfare rolls or recipients of monthly disability checks. These are our WORKING POOR, paying their bills and taxes and raising their families with little or no government assistance.

   Whether you are an affected member of this New Hampshire end-around or not, a call/email or two to your local reps to push this common-sense acceptance of federal funds may help for a positive outcome in the fall. Think about this: if New Hampshire was hit by a hurricane or other natural disaster next week, would Hassan have to worry about opposition from her legislature in accepting cleanup and reconstruction dollars from Washington? With these impending personal financial disasters awaiting 58,000 of our neighbors in a few months, the Medicaid answer should be just as obvious.