There They Go Again: WRAL Parent Company Blame Thousands of Deaths on Republican Refusal to Expand Medicaid

RALEIGH – It’s remarkable that a company operating multiple “news” subsidiaries across the Old North State can proffer officially sanctioned hard Left opinions maligning Republicans with outrageous smears, and somehow still have viewers and readers that regard them as an objective source.

It wasn’t long ago that the Capitol Broadcasting Company opined in a WRAL Editorial, its flagship TV station, that under Republican leadership North Carolina was on par with North Korea or Iran. Seriously.

That’s the official opinion of the company that owns, manages, and staffs the likes of WRAL and then presents their work as neutral, non-partisan news.

Well now those at the top of CBC are at it again, this time implying that Republican state lawmakers are responsible for letting people die because they refuse to expand the enormous entitlement program known as Medicaid.

And the icing on the cake? They say the only reason they refuse to expand Medicaid is because the option is tied to Barack Obama, whom they hate, via his “Affordable (HAHAHA) Care Act.” Implicit in that accusation is that the Republicans don’t like Obama because he’s black – a card played innumerable times by Democrats during the Obama years.

“If ignorance is bliss, the state Senate might be the happiest place on the planet. It also may be where the largest number of President Barack Obama haters hang out.

The logical conclusion: It is not about state money since the state’s hospitals have agreed to a plan that would cover the 10 percent cost of Medicaid expansion that isn’t being paid for through federal funds.

That’s the only way to comprehend the unrelenting opposition to even study, much less expand, health care coverage to more than half-a-million citizens who don’t have it now. It is hatred of Obama. Period.

[…]

Does anyone care that refusal to expand Medicaid coverage is, truly, a life and death matter?

At least 38 people a month – nearly 2,000 in North Carolina since 2014 when the Medicaid expansion program was available – die because they don’t have access to adequate health care, research shows.

• How many cases of breast cancer were not identified because there have been 52,000 annual mammograms missed?
• How many North Carolinians suffered because 36,000 diabetics have had to go without their medication?
• Why would anyone oppose something that would add 62,000 jobs to the North Carolina economy?“

So, Republicans are partisan ideologues that would rather see people die than agree to slam-dunk policies pushed by a black president. Got it.

But this author, penning the official opinion of CBC, and framing the needs of some as superior to the rights of others, is not an ideologue?

The functional effect of Medicaid expansion is to offer the entitlement program to those able-bodied adults with jobs that do not currently qualify for a program that was originally aimed at the most impoverished among us.

The Office of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, whose opinion on expansion is the same as the CBC unsurprisingly, has estimated such an expansion would add more than 600,000 people to Medicaid rolls. More than half a million more people for federal and state taxpayers to subsidize – a Big Government, redistributionist’s dream.

‘B-B-But it’s paid for! It’s a win-win!’ says the CBC. Is it, really?

Former analyst for the John Locke Foundation, an evil think tank in the eyes of the CBC, Katherine Restrepo was on the Medicaid beat for years, spelling out just why these narratives are problematic to say the least. Restrepo wrote last year:

“It’s been consistently reported that expanding Medicaid, Obamacare-style, would cost North Carolina $6 billion over the next ten years. So how exactly will this be paid for, now that expansion states are required to cover 5 percent of the cost in 2017, and 10 percent of costs after 2020? The budget line item description states, “no existing general fund tax dollars are needed to support the expansion.” Rather, the statement goes on to say that, “the non-federal share of expansion costs is provided through provider contributions that fall well under federal limits.” In plain speak, this means that North Carolina hospitals will initially foot the Medicaid bill, and then get their money back.”

[…]

“Provider contributions,” also known as provider assessments, are a classic example that dates back to the mid-1980s. Medicaid providers such as hospitals volunteer to be assessed, or taxed, by the state. In return, the state disburses this revenue back to hospitals and other health facilities, all the while pulling down federal match money.”

So the “win-win” situation Leftist outfits like the CBC describe is actually a case of government financing chicanery that gives the appearance of no net costs to the State while in actuality bilking federal taxpayers in the state through increased federal spending.

The CBC continues:

“Legislative leaders can obfuscate all they want. There are strong economic, social and moral reasons to expand Medicaid. There are no reasons other than ideological nonsense not to.”

The reasons to oppose Medicaid expansion, in addition to the practical financial liablity reasons, are of course ideological. And they should be. There is a clear contrast between the ideologies that drive Republicans and Democrats, the former is philosophically opposed to Big Government programs that steal from some to give to others, while the latter follow a collectivist philosophy that completely discount and Individual’s rights in favor of the common good (even when that good is never actually achieved).

The CBC and their friends on the Left cannot stand a world view that champions individual responsibility and free markets, and so they use faux compassion for the needy and essentially call Republicans murderers to combat it.

“Our current crop of legislative leaders and their “think tank” partners regularly shame, blame and disregard low income citizens. Then they do their best to make it harder for them to vote. Why else would anyone want to rearrange early voting to eliminate one of the busier days?

Voters are seeing the real choices they’ll have at the polls in November.”

Voters that get their “news” from WRAL/CBC certainly are not seeing the real choices, but rather a warped Leftist view. Those that get their information from varied sources will see some clear choices, though – between Republicans that have made fiscally sound decisions and respected taxpayers’ money (for the most part), and a cohort of Democrats in office and the in the media that routinely resort to smear tactics of crying racism, and even calling Republicans murderers, because they oppose more Big Government.

Choose wisely.