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The Trump administration is again at it once more. This time, they’re attempting to intestine Medicaid via what’s being referred to as the “Huge Lovely Invoice.” It’s not well being coverage. It’s a demise sentence with a fascist slogan. Nearly 9 million People stand to lose healthcare, and the standard political narrative says Black and brown of us will endure most.
However let’s discuss in regards to the fact that makes individuals uncomfortable: the one largest racial group on Medicaid is white.
Greater than 78 million People depend on Medicaid. Practically 40% of them are white. These are kids, the aged, disabled of us, and low-income staff in purple states the place Trump flags nonetheless flap proudly on entrance porches. In locations like Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arkansas, Medicaid is the one motive some hospitals exist, the one motive most cancers sufferers get chemo, the one motive opioid survivors keep alive. And but, these are the very states on the chopping block.
Beneath the GOP plan, Medicaid can be was a block grant program. That is basically a hunger weight-reduction plan for state budgets. Much less cash. Extra restrictions. Fewer individuals lined. The mathematics is brutal, and the cruelty is the purpose. And if that weren’t sufficient dystopia for the week, RFK Jr. simply fired a dozen high scientists and epidemiologists on the CDC. He’s basically pouring bleach into the nation’s immune system.
Let’s not overlook: in the course of the peak of COVID, white People made up the most important share of deaths. Rural white communities had been hollowed out whereas public well being was was a partisan punching bag. And now the very infrastructure that might forestall the subsequent mass casualty occasion is being ripped to shreds.
Whereas Medicaid has lengthy been framed within the common creativeness as a “welfare program” for others, the fact is completely different and all the time has been. It’s poor white households, veterans, rural seniors, and disabled kids who will bleed first. However GOP leaders would somewhat torch the complete security web than admit authorities can work, particularly if it really works for individuals they’ve educated voters to resent.
That is the logic of white supremacy: if saving white of us means saving somebody darker, they’d somewhat burn all of it down.
To know why white Trump supporters preserve cheering for insurance policies that kill them, and the way Medicaid cuts are simply the most recent chapter within the lengthy, arc of white supremacy, tune in to this week’s first episode of The Covfefe Chronicles.
Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and creator of “Spare The Children: Why Whupping Youngsters Received’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Youngsters In Jim Crow America.” Learn her Substack right here.
SEE ALSO:
Op-Ed: You Don’t Get To Burn It Down If You’ve By no means Constructed A Rattling Factor
Op-Ed: Care For Constituents Or Chaos? Medicaid Cuts Will Devastate All Of Us