re: Why do red states keep voting to expand Medicaid?

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People don't want to drive 70 miles to OKC or Tulsa for elective surgeries or emergency room visits.

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Yeah. It’s crazy we reward that kid of laziness. If driving for an hour is way too much effort to save ones own life—why should some random taxpayer have to sacrifice an extra hour of work to save it?

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In Missouri all the rural counties voted no...STL and KC's population pushed it thru.

I guess all the STL and KC folks are happy. More free stuff.


On a good note, Gold is over $2K! Silver at $25 and my 401K is up. It's in a 2030 fund. The big fear I have it that Dems will be coming after our 401K if they get power.

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Don't forget Columbia; we voted for it too

Not surprising (but disappointing) to me that rural folks, of whom this will benefit the most, voted against their interests and tried to shoot it down, but luckily folks in Stl, Boone County and KC who pushed it through.

Randolph County (Moberly) has a hospital on life support, and this will likely keep the hospital going, saving a bunch of jobs and allow poor folks in the area to get healthcare they need. They voted against it 68-31...

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90% of this state vehemently opposes the ACA, yet they voted for what is basically an expansion of Obamacare. Talked to a couple friends who voted for it, and they denied that it was what I claimed it was, so I looked it up on my phone and showed them what they voted to pass...

And they both immediately developed buyers remorse after seeing that what I said was true. Too late now.

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So they like the provision literally up until he moment they understood it was Obamacare. Just saying, Democrats have been making this exact argument for a number of years...

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Because the GOP has not come together and passed any better alternative.

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Yeah. There is no alternative that allows for free healthcare. The GOP aren’t Santa Claus.

What I can’t figure out is the Democrats promise “free” care and the burden for figuring out how to pay for it always falls to the Republicans.

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How many malls do you see in rural towns? People will drive all sorts of distance to go shopping, but they won’t for healthcare. Something is wrong with that.

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I'm not necessarily pushing back. I'm more curious as to your thoughts. The analogy I always use for hospitals is that they're effectively 15-star hotels at 10K a night. From a purely economic perspective, there is no reason to ever put one in a rural area. Obviously, that's not practical, so I'm always curious how people would solve for the healthcare of those folks.

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I gotcha. We're on the same page. Other than emeregecy care (stabilization) and routine GP care (cheap!) an hour's drive is nothing for life-saving treatment.

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I largely agree. I used to work for a very large Hospital System in the Midwest that idiosyncratic reasons operated a number of critical access hospitals. We fought like hell to turn them into EDs with a super basic procedural suite and absolutely no L&D but the counties and the state would lose their shite about it. The actually expected us to just eat the $15M annual loss on a hospital that had a ADC of less than 3.