Red States Make Sibelius See Red

Those uncooperative red states are really making Obamacare’s implementation “doubly difficult.”

Erika Johnsen, Hot Air, August 12, 2012

Those 34 red states who are leaving it up to the Obama administration to implement  health exchanges are making implemention  difficult and expensive.  

It was assumed all states would fall in line for federal monies to expand Medicaid. People would embrace Obamacare.    But the law was unpopular  from the get go.  And  somewhere along the line,  red states decided to draw a red line in the sand to let Washington  develop and debug health exchange computers.  The expense and bureaucratic machinations  will produce more red ink and  more red tape.    Besides,  to red state politicians ,  federal Medicaid money is full of red herrings that increase state debts, putting them ever deeper in the red.

Now comes more red hot,  more red ink news.    HHS is going to spend $67 million to recruit and train navigators to persuade the uninsured and underinsured to join the exchanges,  and untold millions more dollars to develop computer programs for the 34 states, and a centralized hub to integrate systems from seven federal agencies to see who qualifies for the exchanges.   .

How did the Red State-Blue State metaphor come to be?   After all, when referring to governments, globally  the word “red” is more associated with communists, socialists  and liberals , while “blue” is linked to political conservatives.

The terms “red states” and “blue states” came into vogue in 2000.   It’s a TV invented term. The late Tim Russert used red and white colors on a television map to distinguish between conservative Republican states and liberal Democratic states.   Gore’s political signs were blue, and Bush’s were red.   It was as simple as that.  More recently the in-between states politically,  neither predictably Democratic or Republican,  have come to be known as “purple states.”   

After the Trayvon Martin trial, some commentators say these red, blue, and purple no longer apply.  We are now a polarized black and white nation.    I prefer to think we are country of red, white, and blue patriots,  dedicated to the betterment of the United States as a whole.   The red and white horizontal stripes on the flag mean something.  So does the blue background behind the 50 state stars.

To conclude

Conservatives are red,
Liberals are blue.
Independents are purple
What color are you?

The answer may not be easy, for as Sir William Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame observed:

I often think it's comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every girl
That's born into the world alive,
Is either a little liberal,
Or else a little conservative!
 

Tweet:  Kathleen Sibelius,  Secretary for HHS, says she is seeing red because red states, are making Obamacare  “doubly  difficult” to implement.