Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives: Finally, Virginia Inches Closer To Medicaid Expansion
The Washington Post: At Last, Virginia Republicans Might Allow Their State Better Medicaid
For the past four years, Virginia has thumbed its nose at billions of dollars in federal funding while leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without health insurance, all in service to Republican lawmakers’ antipathy toward Obamacare. The irrationality of their stance, and the damage it has done to their constituents, has been manifest. Now GOP obstruction has begun to crack under the weight of its own illogic. (4/9)
The Washington Post: Will Virginia Finally Do The Right Thing For 400,000 People Desperate For Health Care?
Watch this, America. A state may be about to do something sensible, bipartisan and even humanitarian to take care of its people.It could still fall apart, as it has before. But Virginia’s lawmakers appear to be on the verge of insuring about 400,000 low-income residents by expanding Medicaid after years of refusing to do so. Remember, Virginia is a place where thousands of people queue up before dawn on one weekend every summer to get free treatment from volunteers who turn livestock pens into medical crash units at the Wise County Fairgrounds because people are so desperate for care. (Petula Dvorak, 4/9)
USA Today: Trump And GOP Hypocrisy On Mental Health And Medicaid
A mental health problem at the highest level,” President Trump said after a shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas left 26 parishioners dead. “Mental health is often a big problem underlying these tragedies,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said after a gunman killed 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. If Republican leaders are talking about mental health, it’s generally for one reason — to avoid talking about guns. By any measure, the claim that mental illness is to blame for gun violence is false. (Rep. Joe Kennedy, 4/9)
