Oklahoma Hearts Obamacare

Oklahoma voters have amended their constitution to accept the Medicaid expansion:

Oklahoma voters on Tuesday narrowly approved a ballot measure to extend Medicaid to tens of thousands of poor adults, making their state the first to expand government-backed health insurance during the pandemic.

The vote, which passed with 50.5 percent support, also throws a wrench in the Trump administration’s plan to make Oklahoma the first state to receive its permission to cap Medicaid spending, a longtime goal of conservatives hoping to constrain the safety-net entitlement program.

Oklahoma has become the fifth state where voters defied Republican leaders to expand Medicaid through the ballot. Missouri will hold a similar vote on Medicaid expansion later this summer.

Republicans keep using the courts to go after the ACA because their own core ideas about healthcare — i.e. most people who have insurance should either have worse insurance or no insurance, and people with no insurance should go fuck themselves — have virtually no mass constituency, and can’t win even in off-term elections with overwhelmingly Republican electorates.