When Medicaid Expands, More People Vote

Republicans' worst fears realized: an activated electorate that expects its government to actually function and provide services. How will the GOP respond? Enhanced voter suppression, no doubt.

After realizing the Democrats were doing well with healthcare voter support, the Republicans went on the attack lying to the American public that they were in favor of pre-existing conditions & Medicaid. When, in fact, they tried to take that all away. Still 1/2 the country vote GOP. Go figure.

People who have been added to Medicaid are voting more in order to keep it from being taken away. A threat that something will be lost has twice as much motivating power as a promise that something new will be received. It's called "loss aversion." The political climate has continually reinforced the threat. It's a much more likely explanation than treatment for depression, better health, receiving information about voting, or people being grateful to the government.

Health care is the one issue that could drive Rural America toward Dems, but only if it is positioned in starker terms than just the protection of pre-existing (hate the built-in redundancy of that term) conditions. Dems should explain that Medicare for all means coverage all year long even if your work is seasonal. That the price of medications you need, like insulin, won't double in three years if the government is negotiating the price. And that if they are self-employed farmers, the benefits they get can be just as good and cost-effective as those their city cousins get if we just eliminate the unearned profits the insurers collect.

The main reason the GOP hates it.

This fuels two fires: those GOP voters who say Democratic Party supporters only want "free stuff" and those Democrats who say the GOP wants to suppress voters even if it hurts the neediest among us.

Well this alone will keep Republicans fighting Medicaid expansion. Sad.

Just wait. Fox News will start a months long campaign where all of its taking heads thank the GOP for expanding Medicaid. And the old folks will believe it.

If the intent of the article was to imply that expansion of Medicaid somehow translates into more votes for Democrats, think again. At the food bank where I volunteer, many if not all the beneficiaries are also Medicaid beneficiaries, yet while encouraging those who came during my shift to vote they indicated that they might vote and that if they did they would vote for Senator Cruz because he was no socialist but instead was God-fearing and against abortions, and would stop the Central American migrant invasion! Obviously, they had been blinded by Cruz’s rhetoric and thus unable to see that Cruz and his GOP compadres in the Senate are intent on decimating Medicaid.

Republicans, who run most states, surely don't want medicare-level participants voting!

Causing more people to vote is why my state, Texas will be the last to expand Medicaid. Texas has a dismal record of voter turnout. Hopefully, with more people like Beto on future ballots, we'll eventually become enlightened to understand what it means to care for our brothers. As is, billionaire oilmen, banks and real estate special interests run state government. They don't want to end their good deal. With our regressive tax system, the bottom 40% pay a disproportionate four times as much in taxes as the 1%. https://itep.org/whopays/#The%2010%20Most%20Regressive%20State%20&%20Local%20Tax%20Systems Former Texas Food Stamp, TANF and Medicaid manager...

Wow, congrats, America! You're finally realizing that when basic needs are met, people can actually participate in society.

Yay...another reason for the GOP to oppose giving health care to poor people.

Being treated with decency and respect goes a long way toward assisting people in participating fully in our democratic process. I applaud voters for ensuring that more uninsured people will now gain healthcare, and along with it, may be inspired to register to vote and to cast a vote. Anything we can to provide our fellow citizens with a sense of decency and respect, with assistance when they fall ill or need medical care or other social services is important to me and so many others who believe the words of the Declaration of Independence: that all men (and women) are created equal and have unalienable rights that no one should withhold from them.

Hey, give the average person what they need and they will vote for you. The democrats finally realized this outside big liberal central cities. While identity obsessed, extreme liberal politics work well in these cities they do not play well outside in rural areas and suburbs which is still a majority of the country.

Yet another reason the GOP hates it - not only does it help poor people, it makes them vote, and we can't have that.

Now the GOP has another reason to block expansion of Medicaid. They certainly don't want poor people to vote.

Reading this review of possible primary causes linking the expansion of Medicare and the will to vote, I am reminded of Amartya Sen’s thesis in his book “Development as Freedom”. The relationships among basic human rights are not simple, but spill over in unexpected ways, building upon each other. Health care is a basic human right, as is the right to vote. Noting the multiplicity of types connections between these two rights only supports the wisdom of Sen’s observations of 20 years ago.

Voter participation always increases when people have a personal stake in the outcome. But Democrats will need to keep healthcare front and center, along with jobs and the economy, as issues that are critical to virtually everyone. And Republicans might realize that their efforts to label the ACA as "Obamacare" could backfire as more and more people realize that the program benefits them and forever associate it with Democrats (as they should). So the GOP will continue to do everything they can to sabotage the program, and failing that they will tell their false-information voters that Obama was really a Republican and people owe their health coverage to the GOP.

IMO the GOP underestimated the number of voters who are seeing their parents into frail old age (based on boomer demographics this is a huge number now seeing parents start to need Medicaid nursing homes, services etc). Threatening to take away the ACA as well as cutting SS and Medicare, with Medicaid also firmly in the GOP sights could have contributed to a higher turnout of voters looking to expand and preserve Medicaid services.