The White House on Monday accused Republican governors blocking the expansion of Medicaid coverage of “quite literally putting their political ambition against the lives of some people.”
Team Obama trumpeted that roughly 16.4 million uninsured Americans have gained health coverage since Obamacare was passed, using the announcement to hit Republican governors resisting the expansion of Medicaid in their states.
“There continue to be Republicans across the country who are blocking the expansion of Medicaid in a way that literally prevents individuals in their states from getting badly needed healthcare coverage that would be 100 percent paid for by the federal government,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
“For the life of me, I can’t understand why anybody would reach that conclusion. But some Republicans in this case are quite literally putting their political ambition against the lives of some people in their state. And that’s a shame and that’s unfortunate.”
According to the Obama administration, 13 percent of Americans are now uninsured, down from 20 percent when the healthcare law first took effect.
Republican governors say that their opposition to Medicaid expansion is not purely about conservative politics. They argue that such an expansion of entitlements would ultimately imperil their own budgets.
States don’t have to pay for the expansion until 2017, when the federal funding will start phasing down until it covers 90 percent of costs for the newly eligible population. The states then will have to cover the remainder.
