With Senator McCain’s absence from the Senate to recuperate from surgery, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced a further delay of the vote on the Republicans’ odious tax cut masquerading as health care reform. We should use this delay to continue to put pressure on vulnerable Republican senators to kill this nightmare once and for all. We should also take the extra time afforded by this delay to fully understand this wolf in sheep’s clothing. The BRCA is nothing less than a covert attempt to overturn Medicaid, a bedrock of the American health care system since 1965.
Although Americans are allergic to the inconvenient truths of our history, an understanding of the origin of Medicaid and the extent of its impact, is key to understanding the right wing’s virulent opposition to it. Few people remember the role of African American civil rights leaders in the passage of Medicaid and Medicare. Vann Newkirk’s excellent article, “The Fight for Health Care Has Always Been about Civil Rights,” The Atlantic, June 27, 2017, details the seminal role of Black medical professionals and civil rights leaders (often one and the same) in securing the passage of Medicaid. The American Medical Association staunchly opposed Medicaid at the time and the National Medical Association (the organization of Black doctors formed because the AMA was segregated) was the only medical association to provide Congressional testimony in favor of Medicaid and Medicare.
After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Medicaid/Medicare in 1965, it became illegal for hospitals or clinics that received federal funds to refuse to treat Black patients (Source: Newkirk, The Atlantic). Since its passage, Medicaid has been responsible for narrowing the health disparities between African Americans and white Americans that were a direct outgrowth of a segregated medical establishment that refused to treat Black patients. Resentful right wing conservatives have consistently demagogued Medicaid as a handout for the “undeserving poor,” a dog whistle meant to evoke images of Black welfare cheats getting free medical care off the backs of “hardworking” whites.
Of course, the reality of who Medicaid serves is dramatically different. Medicaid covers nearly half of all American births. It provides services for disabled adults and children that permit them to participate fully in society and lead more independent lives. It provides critical mental health and addiction services. In light of the raging opioid crisis, there is no question that dramatic Medicaid cuts would lead to more addiction related deaths.
The right wing antipathy to Medicaid, though, has little to do with the reality of all of the good that it does and everything to do with the role that it has played in increasing the equality of access to health care for African Americans and empowering us to take advantage of our other hard won civil rights.
Make no mistake. Medicaid was an important blow against the edifice of white supremacy. That is why they want to kill it.