Healthcare and the American Nations

Another map of the American nations:

This is where the states stand on Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid. As you can see, it’s far from universally embraced. Now let’s compare that to this map:

And for that matter, this map:

Most of the usual suspects. Most prominent among those who reject the Medicaid expansion are those in the Deep South/Tidewater. By contrast, much of Yankeedom, the Midlands, and the Left Coast have embraced it openly, as expected.

Interestingly, much of Greater Appalachia has embraced the Medicaid expansion as well. This highlights a very important aspect of the healthcare discussion, as with socialist ideals in general: the importance of homogeneity.

A few recent articles have correctly noted that the Deep South’s opposition to Obamacare stems from simmering racism. More accurately (though not by much), I’d say it stems from clannish peoples not wanting share the spoils of the commonweal with those outside the “tribe”:

From Racism and Cruelty: What’s Behind the GOP’s Healthcare Agenda? | The Nation

Before he was disgraced into resigning his presidency over the Watergate burglary scandal, Richard Nixon had successfully engineered an even more odious plot known as his Southern Strategy. The trick was devilishly simple: Appeal to the persistent racist inclination of Southern whites by abandoning the Republican Party’s historic association with civil rights and demonizing the black victims of the South’s history of segregation.

That same divisive strategy is at work in the Republican rejection of the Affordable Care Act. GOP governors are largely in control of the 26 states, including all but Arkansas in the South, that have refused to implement the act’s provision for an expansion of Medicaid to cover the millions of American working poor who earn too much to qualify for the program now. A New York Times analysis of census data concludes that as a result of the Republican governors’ resistance, “A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help. …”

Also this piece from Paul Krugman – The War On The Poor Is A War On You-Know-Who:

What the report makes clear is that the current Republican obsession with attacking programs that benefit Americans in need, ranging from food stamps to Obamacare, isn’t about some philosophical commitment to small government, still less worries about incentive effects and implicit marginal tax rates. It’s about anxiety over a changing America — the multiracial, multicultural society we’re becoming — and anger that Democrats are taking Their Money and giving it to Those People. In other words, it’s still race after all these years.

Of course, in Krugman’s case, he’s unsurprisingly blind to the deleterious effects the demographic change he extols will have, but he is spot on about conservative White opposition to social welfare programs.

As HBD Chick put it (on her post liberal (white) guilt as altruistic punishment):

i said: “…lady a is ok with contributing to the commonweal, but lady b (and her man, bubba) are not (even though, at the same time, they might be VERY ok with TAKING from the common pot!).”

for the record, i think this is one of the fundamental problems with “lady b”/clannish societies, and that is that, while they generally do not want to contribute to the common pool (to varying degrees), they are VERY happy to TAKE from the common pool as much as possible to the benefit of themselves and their extended family members.

The clannish elements of British American society, the descendants of the Cavaliers and the Ulster Scots, are indifferent to contributing a common pot, and they are certainly uncomfortable about anything they contribute to the common pot going to non-kin, especially people who aren’t even of the same race.

The denizens of the Deep South/Tidewater live in states with large Black minorities. Deep Southern Whites correctly see their funds being redistributed from themselves to non-Whites, particularly Blacks. Hence, they oppose it.

Which brings me to Greater Appalachia. The Appalachian states that accept the Medicaid expansion are largely homogeneously Scotch-Irish. Further still, they would certainly be on the receiving end of tax revenue from Obamacare. Hence, they are more receptive to the Medicaid expansion, perhaps correctly reasoning that they stand to gain from its implementation (at least within-state).

Interestingly, the Far West is a bit topsy-turvy from what we’d expect. The northern more homogenous Far Western states oppose the Medicaid expansion, while the ones that contain “El Norte” embrace it. In the former case, I suspect that the rugged individualism of the Far Westerners overrides their recognition that they’d (largely) stand to gain from Obamacare. However, Montana did set up its own single-payer universal health care system ahead of Obamacare. This may exemplify the sentiment in somewhat clannish peoples: commonweal, but only for those in the tribe.

On that note, to be fair to the progenitors of the nations of the Old North, both the descendants of the Puritans and the descendants of the Quakers are likely minorities in their respective nations – the latter certainly so (since they were since the beginning). I suspect that the purer Yankee and Quaker elements would, if left to their own devices, set up their own – internal – universal health care system, much as Vermont has. They favor the commonweal – within group. Both the Puritans and the Quakers were “in-betweeners”, and may not have favored complete universalism.

As for here in Yankee/New French Maine, we’re unfortunately stuck with the brilliance of our esteemed French-Canadian Governor Paul LePage. He vehemently opposes the Medicaid expansion here. Perhaps this may have something to do with his New French origin. The French Canadians seem to have either picked up some clannish elements here in America or perhaps brought these traits with them, owing to their regional origin in France (see also Maps of the American Nations).

In either case, it is clear that the American nations persists, and perhaps, as John Derbyshire recently put it, “The War Between the States goes on,” where one battlefield (out of many) is healthcare.

See also: The Audacious Epigone: Endovelicus