Cutting off your nose to spite Obama.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - Brief article

One of the worse aspects of the Republican plot to subvert Obamacare is the refusal of Republicans in state legislatures in Texas, Florida, Kansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia to expand Medicaid to help people below the poverty line get Obamacare. Sandy Praeger, the Kansas insurance commissioner, tells Robert Pear of the Times that the "'poorest of the poor' will fall into a gap in which no assistance is available." Pear adds, "More than half of all people without health insurance live in states that are not planning to expand Medicaid."

And those states have more bad news for the poor. "Of the 4[degrees] states that offer state-subsidized preschool, 27 have reduced perchild funds in 2011-12," according to Motoko Rich of the Times. Rich also notes that, according to a Department of...