New York State Government Is Bad For Your Health

When a Republican congressman from Buffalo, Chris Collins, tried to save the shambolic effort to repeal Obamacare, he had a novel idea that just about everyone else hated: make the state government pay the full share of Medicaid expenses for upstate and suburban counties.

“Collins tried to play New Yorkers for fools, and while we know he is a financial fraudster, his latest insider trading scheme backfired and didn’t outsmart the people of this state,” fumed Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, so enraged by the $2.3 billion the state would have to drum up if Donald Trump and Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act ever passed with Collins’s amendment, threatened to sue, raise taxes, and close hospitals. Since New York City was excluded from the Collins proposal, the city’s sole GOP House member, Dan Donovan, also panned the amendment, and came out against the AHCA. Because Ryan and Trump concocted such an awful piece of legislation, it was never brought up for a vote, and Obamacare survived.

Since Collins is a staunch ally of Trump, Democrats and more moderate Republicans could easily dismiss his amendment as a cynical maneuver to secure passage of a flawed bill. In our ultra-partisan era, ideas that emerge from unexpected places are immediately taboo. If it reeks of Trump, the average liberals says, we just don’t go there.

Read more: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/ny-state-government-is-bad-for-your-health-9849114