In the Washington Post over the weekend, University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack described some provisions of Cornyn's proposal as 'helpful and constructive,' but highlighted a missing piece of the puzzle.
"Cornyn’s proposal does not address the most glaring issue in American mental health policy: the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. Medicaid expansion was always the public health cornerstone of ACA. It remains the single most important measure to expand access to mental health and addiction treatment, serving severely vulnerable populations such as the homeless, addressing the complicated medical and psychiatric difficulties of many young men cycling through our jails and prisons."
I suspect that for many Republicans, the idea of 'Obamacare' playing a meaningful role in preventing mass-shootings must sound ridiculous. After all, 'Obamacare' is inherently bad, even hen it's good, and all its provisions must be rejected because, well, just because...
...My suspicion, based on years of conservative apoplexy about expanding American's access to affordable health security, is that when Republicans talk about mental health as a substitute for a debate about gun policy, they're creating a smoke screen...
...They can, however, prove these suspicions wrong fairly easily. Pollack concluded, 'If any...politician suggests that mental health rather than gun policy is central to reducing mass homicides, ask where they stand on Medicaid expansion. Their answer will be clarifying.'
Let's start with Senator Cornyn, who fought tooth and nail to block Medicaid expansion in Texas, despite the fact that Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the entire country."
eye'm thynkin': Mass homicide is bad...guns are good...making mental health care available to everyone is good..."Obamacare" expands mental health care to everyone under Medicaid..."Obamacare" is bad... Republican spin-doctors are surely working overtime right now.
Read more at MSNBC
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