Resistance to Medicaid expansion not about the money

[phantom power]

We have to remember that this is an ideological and even a moral issue to conservatives, who view dependence on any form of public assistance as eroding the “moral fiber” of the poor (as Paul Ryan likes to put it), and as corrupting the country through empowerment of big government as a redistributor of wealth from virtuous taxpayers to parasites who will perpetually vote themselves more of other people’s money.

This line of “reasoning,” of course, would justify the abolition of Medicaid, not just a failure to expand it, but conservatives are careful (and smart) to disguise that ultimate goal and simply suggest we have reached some sort of welfare-state tipping point beyond which we become Greece.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_07/resistance_to_medicaid_expansi038359.php#