Medicaid Expansion: What's at Stake

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In states where Medicaid has not been expanded, hospitals, particularly rural hospitals, are coming under the increasing strain of treating indigent patients who are unable to pay them. The reason is that the federal subsidies to make up for indigent patients is starting to go down, since the beginning of 2014, because the state exchanges and the expansion of Medicaid are supposed to finally significantly reduce the problem of indigent patients. States would at most have to pay 10% to expand Medicaid (which percentage won't take effect until 2020), but many refuse, using cost as an excuse, without realizing the cost to their own states' health care systems.

Or when they do realize it, they blame Obama for finally trying to bring an end to a system where indigent patients overused emergency rooms, the hospitals received massive federal subsidies for taking in such patients, and the same would then ruthlessly and mercilessly attempt debt collection on those same indigent patients and replace it with a system where as many patients as possible are covered by some sort of insurance that would pay the hospitals and not wreck the credit of indigent patients (and to end the debt collection harassment). This shows how backward and f****d up their worldview is.

They seem themselves as old patriots wearing tricorne hats fighting an overbearing government system, which they are actually completely misrepresenting. It's attempting to finally correct the f****d up system that passed for health care in America that actually was what was overbearing to many patients.