How many uninsured? The equivalent of 25 states

Frustrated with the continuing criticism of Obamacare Matt Miller of public radio’s “Left, Right and Center” is writing about the new bottom line of the politics of health care reform in 2012: the Republicans seem to have cast aside the idea of providing coverage for the nation’s estimated 50 million uninsured.

In an Op-Ed piece in The Washington Post, Miller notes that, contrary to previous efforts by the GOP to present alternative plans in response to Democratic initiatives, the closest congressional Republicans have come to an option was a plan to insure 3 million people.

What’s more, six Republican governors have said they will reject the federal money within Obamacare to expand Medicaid for their state’s uninsured. Gov. Rick Perry, with typical Texas swagger, proudly announced that he will shun the funding, despite the fact that his state has a troubling ratio of 1-in-4 Texans without health care coverage.

Miller suggests that President Obama should focus on one fact to counter GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare: The number of states with a combined population equal to the number of uninsured in America is an astounding 25 states. Twenty-five.

That shameful statistic refers to: Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Utah, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming.

“Would America turn its back on the citizens of these 25 states,” Miller asks, “if everyone there lacked basic health coverage?”

Miller concludes:

“I feel like a broken record but some truths bear repeating. Only in America could a Democratic president pass Mitt Romney’s health plan and fund it partly through John McCain’s best idea from the last campaign -- taxing some employer-provided (‘Cadillac’) plans -- and be branded a ‘socialist.’

“In every other advanced nation, the idea that government has a central role in assuring basic health security was settled decades ago -- a consensus conservatives abroad embrace. Always remember: conservative icon Margaret Thatcher would have been chased from office if she had proposed anything as radically conservative (Miller’s emphasis) as Obamacare -- which relies on private docs to deliver the medicine, after all, and still leaves 20 million people uncovered.”

You can read more here.