Weird NY Times Column: Not Supporting ObamaCare Is Slavery or Something

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This is just downright bizarre:

[T]he South is once again committed to taking a backward path. By refusing to expand health care for the working poor through Medicaid, which is paid for by the federal government under Obamacare, most of the old Confederacy is committed to keeping millions of its own fellow citizens in poverty and poor health. They are dooming themselves, further, as the Left-Behind States.

What? Let’s read that again:

“Medicaid . . . is paid for by the federal government under Obamacare.”

What does this mean?

Elsewhere, the expansion of Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, has been one of the few success stories of Obamacare. . . .
In Kentucky, which has bravely tried to buck the retrograde tide, Medicaid expansion is projected to create 17,000 jobs. In Washington, the state predicts 10,000 new jobs and savings of $300 million in the first 18 months of expansion.

Do you believe this? “Free” money from the federal government? Medicaid as a job-creation dynamo? While I have not bothered to dig down on the data here, the basic economics of it is like saying that if you take $5 out of your pants pocket and put it in your coat pocket, you will then have $10. Government has no money of its own to spend. Every cent expended by government must come either from tax revenue or from borrowing, and borrowing — i.e., deficit spending — is ultimately a drag on economic growth, because capital invested in government bonds (which is how deficit spending is financed) is capital not invested in private-sector businesses.

The liberal belief in “free government money” is like one of those quasi-religious magical thinking exercises that Ace discusses here.

To cite X-number of people signing up for “expanded Medicaid” as “success” is simply to say that if you’re giving away the taxpayers’ money, moochers will gladly take their share of the loot.

Is the South doomed to be the “Left-Behind States”? Next time you hear of someone moving from Texas to Detroit, let me know.

 

42 comments

  1. Actually, states bear the burden of about one-third, give or take, of Medicaid spending. That’s why SCOTUS held the feds couldn’t force states to expand. Taking more federal money mandates more state spending which many states cannot afford without busting their budgets.

  2. TANSTAAFL. FedGov gets its cash only by raping the country. And Medicaid is just one form of the financial rape that occurs.

    I will also say that I’m proud the South is resisting the rape known as Zer0care.

  7. the basic economics of it is like saying that if you take $5 out of your pants pocket and put it in your coat pocket, you will then have $10

    No, what you do is have your coat borrow $5 from your pants. Then your pants have a $5 asset (loan to coat) and your coat has $5. So you have $10 to spend.

    Change you to federal government, and pants/coat to departments, and you have a real house of cards.

  9. “The South is doomed to be left behind!” screeches a newspaper based in a city that just elected a full-fledged Communist as mayor.

  13. The stone cold hatred these whacked out weirdo’s have for the South knows no bounds. I truly don’t know what to make of it.

  17. It’s a trap, of course, the federal government will cover 90% of the increased costs for the first three years. That makes it attractive to the states – which naturally was the only purpose of paying it. But after that, it’s back to the regular breakdown.

    One Medicaid reform that is desperately needed is copays. Currently they pay nothing, and treat the services as entitlements. Ask anyone in health care how well Medicaid patients keep appointments.

    Make them pay a minimum charge for every service. Not much, but something.

  19. To his great credit, yes.

    We now know Perry was on pain medication during several of his “boob” moments, so it would have been more accurate to say he was a “dope” instead.

    I’d happily support him if I could be sure he’ll stay off the pills.

  20. Then there is the job multiplier from moving the money from one pocket to another and the projection of future income and borrowing against all that.

    That five bucks can look like $17.50 on paper.

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