Leftists Groups Push Medicaid Expansion Amid Coronavirus Lockdown

RALEIGH – They did it with teacher raises and education, and now they’ve done it with COVID-19; Democrats in North Carolina are back to pushing Medicaid expansion. The perennial plank in the N.C. Democratic Party agenda is one epicenter of why the State doesn’t have a current budget, and they’ll likely look to insert Medicaid expansion into whatever coronavirus-related legislation is crafted in the General Assembly.

Now, the Leftist activists are back to smear Republicans as having made poor people more vulnerable to the Wuhan Coronavirus.

Hey, state Sen. Jerry Tillman! You voted to reject Medicaid expansion in NC, leaving 500K+ low-income North Carolinians without coverage and vulnerable to coronavirus. We’re letting our +4,000 members in your district know about your vote! #ncpol #COVID19 #MedicaidExpansion pic.twitter.com/Tr6eg7HBtM

— Working America (@WorkingAmerica) April 1, 2020

Hey, @SenatorRickGunn! You voted to reject Medicaid expansion in NC, leaving 500K+ low-income North Carolinians without coverage and vulnerable to coronavirus. We’re letting our nearly 9,000 members in your district know about your vote! #ncpol #COVID19 #MedicaidExpansion pic.twitter.com/4R27xMEvLc

— Working America (@WorkingAmerica) April 1, 2020

So they want government (taxpayers) to expand its role in paying for and regulating (bureaucrats) healthcare and emphasize the current public health crisis as the guilt-tripping justification. Meanwhile, there is near universal disappointment with the government’s responses to that very public health crisis in direct association with myriad downsides to central planning that conservatives warn about in opposing Medicaid expansion.

Strategic resources specifically stockpiled for a federal response to pandemics were mismanaged by the federal government (and not under the Trump administration either), contributing to the shortages of masks for healthcare workers plaguing the front line response to the virus outbreak. Why would we want to extend an entitlement to even more people –working, able-bodied adults above the poverty level, at that — when nearly every example of these government interventions leads to higher consumer prices, inferior results, and a giant bill for taxpayers? Because, according to the Leftists pushing their platform, a ‘crisis cannot go to waste.’

The Left looks at times of extraordinary need as their golden years, in which the masses can be more easily convinced of adopting ideas completely foreign to that of individual liberty and individual responsibility. This is their time of harvest. After sowing all the seeds of government as your rightful caretaker, a literal pandemic serves as their best time to reap. It is evident on Capitol Hill with the passage of a $2 trillion package that is mostly bailouts for those with a good presence in the lobby, and it’s evident here with the Left’s push for this and other policies like easing ballot harvesting rules.

That the Left, or Big Government, advances its interest most effectively in times of crisis, when Americans are on their heels, and under duress, says an awful lot about the core premises that animate collectivism. Understanding those implications also reinforces the need for vigilance on the part of constitutional, limited-government, true to the moral principles recognized at our founding. So when Democrats come back to the legislative session and demand Medicaid expansion as an antidote to the ills of coronavirus, republicans need not be surprised, but they especially need not drop their guard against such disastrous policies.