The Politics of Reasonable Fear
I don't like the politics of fear. But some fears are reasonable. Right now, rural emergency rooms all across Georgia are closing for lack of funding. According to a story I read yesterday, Macon County has no emergency room. The lack of Medicaid expansion will be the nail in the coffin of rural care for many states. And without rural hospitals, people who live in the country do not have a fighting chance to survive their strokes and heart attacks. Without the ACA and the Medicaid expansion, people will not get care when they need it and they will die needlessly.
If you live in one of the 26 states that took the Medicaid expansion, you dodged a bullet. However, what happens if all that Citizens United money is used to elect a veto proof Republican Super Majority in Congress? The very first thing that will happen is your Medicaid and your ACA will be canceled. Because someone in the GOP decided to call your insurance Obamacare---and they hate Obama. Yes, it can happen to you.
Right now, hospitals are closing and people are dying for lack of health care equality in this country. The national press will not report on the story. The national press has never heard about Macon County. It is up to Democrats to tell the story of poor and rural Red state America as it suffers from the lack of health insurance. So that everyone knows exactly what is the worst that can happen if they decide to sit this one out this fall.
It's very simple. If you like your new health insurance, go to the poll to protect it and to help others get it, too. If you wish that you had been offered the chance to get health insurance, go to the polls to make your voice heard. And, since the GOP will try to distract us with a lot of this and a lot of that, it will be up to Democrats to keep us all on topic in the most effective way---by putting a human face on the suffering caused by lack of health care. If you know of someone who is sick or dying for lack of insurance that someone in another state got, encourage your friend to share his or her story.
