The Kochs have spent an untold amount across the country to deny Americans access to health care through Medicaid expansion. It’s one of their highest “achievements” and now, they’re getting the notoriety they deserve — well, sort of…
The Tampa Bay Times is recognizing the Kochs’ political long arm, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), for their outstanding advertising, though it’s probably not the sort of praise AFP wants. According to the tongue-in-cheek editorial, AFP Florida has been running ads that educate voters on which lawmakers voted against expanding Medicaid.
From the editorial entitled, “Thanks go to Americans for Prosperity”:
[AFP] is running a new TV and digital ad featuring the names and faces of Republican legislators from Tampa Bay who blocked the state from accepting billions in federal Medicaid expansion money to subsidize health coverage for low-income Floridians. That’s very helpful, because voters should be reminded over and over exactly who voted to deny medical care to tens of thousands of Tampa Bay residents.
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Americans for Prosperity has unlimited resources, and it would be a shame to leave out any local lawmakers who performed such a disservice to their constituents and their communities.
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The ad also plays fast and loose with the truth. It says by rejecting Medicaid expansion, House Republicans saved Floridians more than $1 billion and “protected access to health care for our neediest residents” as they “promoted free-market health care reforms.”
In fact, these Republican lawmakers cost the state billions.
The Kochs’ campaign against Medicaid expansion includes several other of their front groups such as Generation Opportunity and the LIBRE Initiative, with AFP leading the way. After the 2014 election, AFP President Tim Phillips promised to fight against any elected officials who expanded the program, telling the Washington Examiner, “I think it was a dramatic mistake for them to do that, policy-wise and politically. I think it’ll hurt them.”
Now, it seems that at least in Florida, their ad campaign promoting the lawmakers who followed the Kochs could actually have the opposite effect.
In fact, the “free-market health care reforms” the ad credits House Republicans with promoting are essentially the same as telling poor Floridians they are on their own when it comes to buying health care. The bipartisan Medicaid expansion plan approved by the Senate was market-based, because it would have empowered low-income Floridians to use subsidies to purchase private insurance on the federal exchange or elsewhere.
But let’s not quibble over the facts and the sad reality that more than 800,000 poor Floridians were denied access to health coverage by these House Republicans. Let’s give Americans for Prosperity credit for running the ads that remind Tampa Bay voters that their representatives rejected Medicaid expansion. Let’s hope it keeps airing the ads and creates more versions with the names and faces of all of the smiling lawmakers who denied their constituents access to health care. This is really a great public service, and voters need to memorize those names and faces by the November 2016 election.