http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/19/2806521/billionaire-koch-brothers-spending-millions-deny-health-coverage-income-americans/
Conservative advocates funded by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch have launched a massive campaign pressuring states to deny health care coverage to lower income Americans through the Medicaid expansion contained in the Affordable Care Act.
The effort, orchestrated by the group Americans for Prosperity, is targeting lawmakers in Virginia tasked with deciding whether the state should accept federal dollars to provide insurance to individuals and families below 133 percent of the federal poverty line ($31,321 in income for a family of four). Volunteers with the organization are distributing flyers through door-to-door canvassing, attending committee hearings, and according to one lawmakers who has become a target of the campaign, intimidating constituents.
As many as 400,000 Virginians could qualify for coverage if the state expands the Medicaid program, but AFP is warning Virginians that the system “will cost Virginia taxpayers billions,” require “future tax hikes and budget cuts to vital services like schools, police and fire departments,” undermine the “doctor-patient relationship,” increase wait times and even endanger lives. “Medicaid patients are almost twice as likely to die during surgery than individuals with private insurance,” the group writes on its website.
Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will pick up 100 percent of the cost of growing the program from 2014 to 2016 and states would contribute 10 percent thereafter. Analysis from the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis in Richmond finds that “net savings from Medicaid expansion would average about $135 million per year in the upcoming budget cycle” since expanding Medicaid “would allow the state to use federal funds instead of state dollars for these programs that already provide care to the uninsured in Virginia.”
please read the rest of the article, and ask yourself, we know the Koch Bros. are in the business also of trying to buy the government that said coupled with their primary initiative is to deregulate agencies like EPA so they can shortcut and pollute the air and water and us.
we also know that republicans are for those same agendas, we heard Scott Walker thinking he was being rewarded by the Kochs for suppressing Progressive votes to keep Wisc. in the hands of the corporate mob. if they are spending that kind of money to defeat it has to mean it is just what "we the people" need.
