Gov. Scott Walker, sociopath

Republican governors who didn't want the cooties associated with taking President Obama's expanded Medicaid are now pleading with Congress to cut them in on the deal, but a deal that will destroy Medicaid as we know it.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican governors who turned down billions in federal dollars from an expansion of Medicaid under President Barack Obama's health care law now have their hands out in hopes the GOP-controlled Congress comes up with a new formula to provide insurance for low-income Americans. The other GOP governors, such as Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who agreed to expand state-run services in exchange for federal help—more than a dozen out of the 31 states—are adamant that Congress maintain the financing that has allowed them to add millions of low-income people to the health insurance rolls. […] Republican governors and lieutenant governors were in Washington pleading their cases with GOP leaders and the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday as the GOP majority has taken the first step to dismantling the law.

They might get a few listeners in the Senate, but they sure as hell won't in the House. Speaker Paul Ryan and his Republicans don't give a damn. They don't give a damn about governors and they sure as hell don't give a damn about the people who elected those governors, or themselves for that matter. Who they'll listen to? Gov. Scott Walker, fellow sociopath from Wisconsin.

"The simple message is this: Vote to repeal and replace Obamacare immediately and send Medicaid funding to the states in the form of a block grant," Walker wrote last week in a letter to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

And when he gets that money, he can do with it what he likes, unlike existing Medicaid. He can force poor people to pee in cups, to attend mandatory job training, to pay big co-pays—anything he can think of to force people to humiliate themselves jumping through multiple hoops. So many hoops that many would just not apply in the first place. Which is a good way of achieving the goal of not actually covering everybody. That's if he doesn't divert the block grant into other programs.

It would also lead to decreased federal funding and ultimately, as many as 21 million losing the coverage they now have—that's on top of the millions who would be kicked off expanded Medicaid under repeal.