Why I Am Not a Republican, Part 326 (Arkansas Medicaid Expansion – Not)

Yet another story illustrating the depravity of today’s Republican Party.  They so hate Obama and so hate the notion of doing anything to help low-income Americans that they’ve refused to expand Medicare in several states where they have control.  They’ve refused even though the expansion is mostly funded by the feds, and even though accepting the federal money and kicking in just a little of their own would extend coverage to these folks (some 5 million Americans are having to do without otherwise-accessible coverage because of this refusal).

In Arkansas, where there’s a Democratic Governor and a strongly Republican legislature, a way forward was proposed.  What if we used Federal Medicaid dollars to buy private insurance?  It seemed like even the GOP might go along with this, seeing as “[t]he Arkansas legislature can say they’re moving Medicaid recipients into private coverage, rather than expanding a cash-strapped entitlement program.”  Sure enough, the feds approved the waiver, the Arkansas legislature passed the measure last fall, and some 74,000 Arkansans have already signed up for health insurance under its provisions.

Now the GOP is trying to stop it, and they look likely to succeed.  Ed Kilgore says it this way:

Arkansas conservatives are fighting tooth and nail to stop a100% federally-funded privatization of Medicaid, apparently for the pure, ineffable joy of kicking 74,000 (and counting) needy Arkansans out of their health coverage. Pure meanness is a powerful motivator.

I can’t tell from the articles exactly why it needs to pass again with 75% of the vote, but that’s apparently the state of affairs.  And I certainly can’t understand why one human being would knowingly do something like this to another.

Why, again, would anyone with even a shred of conscience choose to align with the GOP?  Why?