A civil war over social security/medicare/medicaid ?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Our "shadow governor," Sen. Russell Pearce, appeared on Sunday Square Off with News 12 anchor Brahm Resnik. At one point, host Resnik probed Pearce’s proposal to reject the federal health care funding and asked him if the more than one million people who rely on the program will just have to “fend for themselves” if AHCCCS doesn’t get the federal money it needs to survive. Opposing Health Funding For A Million Arizonans, Pearce Compares Health Care To High-Priced Fashion Items:

Pearce responded that the issue needs to be “put in context,” and compared funding health care to an unwise, broke shopper going to the fashion merchandise chain Dillard’s and buying clothes. Resnik later asked Pearce what the “future” will be of the million people on the program if it no longer has the funds to operate, and Pearce dryly responded, “They’ll probably be okay,” and suggested that they may move the program towards privatization, adding co-pays and premiums:

RESNIK: Let’s turn to the budget now. You told Howard Fisher of Capitol News Services last week you are prepared to let the Feds keep billions of dollars they provide for the state access program. You said, quote, “If we’re saving (state) money the fact that we lose some federal money means nothing. … Church, community, families got to provide.” So are you saying that you’re willing to let the 1 million people who get health care from the state through access just fend for themselves?

PEARCE: What I’m saying is you sometimes can’t afford to take the federal money –

RESNIK: Are you saying –

PEARCE: Things need to be put in context. Hang on. It’s like going to Dillard’s, you don’t have any money, but it’s a great sale. So I’m gonna buy it, but I have no money. The federal money comes with strings. One of the great challenges we have this session will be to work around some of the stimulus money we took to tie our hands. […]

RESNIK: So you are willing to say no to those billions of dollars?

PEARCE: I don’t think we’ll take the money. […]

RESNIK: And the one million people on access, what’s their future?

PEARCE: They’ll probably be okay.

RESNIK: Okay, how?

PEARCE: […] It’s time to cut the fat and trim government.

RESNIK: Next June when the budget is done will there be an AHCCCS program, a state insurance program for a million people?

PEARCE: We’re not gonna eliminate it, we’re gonna fix it. There’s gonna be co-pays, premiums, we’re gonna fix it.

Watch it:

One in five Arizonans is now utilizing AHCCCS. Due to the recession, the program has already been drastically scaled back, with as many as 18,000 Arizonan children cut from KidsCare– the division set up to care for juveniles — this past year alone. Without the federal funding, there is little hope that AHCCCS will be able to continue to serve Arizonans. Pearce is putting the health of more than a million people on the line with his ideological crusade against the federal government, and denying people health care is not the same as denying them designer goods from fashion retail stores.

The "opt-out" of Medicaid is becoming a Republican talking point. Governor Goodhair, Rick Perry of Texas, whose state now faces a $25 billion budget gap due to years of his Republican fiscal mismanagement, suggested last week Let States Secede From Social Security (VIDEO). And Texas Considers Medicaid Withdrawal.

Nearly 150 years after the start of the Civil War, Neoconfederate "states rights" conservatives want to start another Civil War with talk of secession and rolling back American history to pre-1860 (Sen. Pearce's bill to repeal the 14th Amendment). It is a rejection of Abraham Lincoln and even the Republican Party over the past 150 years. These are not Republicans, these are radical extremists who have coopted the Republican Party label in a hostile internal takeover. The sooner that Americans and the media come to realize this reality and to recognize it for what it is, the better. We are in dangerous territory.