How "Christian America" Deals With the Mentally Ill

It's often the most politically conservative states who like to pride themselves on being the most Christian states as well. They only elect God-fearing Christians, they say, and the only rules they live by are the rules of Christ.

Christian Example and Georgia Governor Nathan Deal

So how do the God-fearing men and women of Georgia explain this?

Every day he’s without his meds, Scott Patrick’s demons return: the urge to get high to forget that he’s dying of AIDS; the anxiety, paranoia, and phantom noises spurred on by his bipolar disorder and PTSD.

Patrick, a former male prostitute and recovering drug addict, was released from a Georgia jail last month without any of his medications on hand. “I could die dirty or die clean,” he said. “I want to die clean.”

So like many struggling Atlantans with nowhere else to go, Patrick sought treatment at Grady Memorial, the state’s largest safety net hospital. He carried all his worldly possessions with him: a change of clothes, a Bible, and some vitamin C drops.

The partisan war over Obamacare is now threatening the mental health services that Patrick and countless others are seeking. The president’s health care law cuts federal subsidies to safety-net hospitals that were expected to have more paying patients under the law’s Medicaid expansion and insurance exchanges. But Republican-controlled states like Georgia have refused to go along with the expansion. That’s turned safety-net providers like Grady into unintended casualties—and mental health services for Georgia’s most troubled residents are first on the chopping block.

It was never meant to happen this way. States like Georgia, which has the nation’s sixth-highest uninsured rate, were supposed to be the biggest beneficiaries of the new Medicaid dollars. But in 2012, the Supreme Court unexpectedly ruled that the federal government couldn’t force states to accept the expansion.

Along with 22 other states with Republican governors or statehouses, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has refused to go along with the Medicaid expansion, saying the cost to the state would be untenable. Democrats counter that it’s a cruel political stunt, since the cost of new coverage is overwhelmingly paid for by the federal government.

So safety-net hospitals like Grady are now caught in the middle: they aren’t getting new Medicaid funding, yet they’ll see a cumulative $18 billion reduction in federal payments by 2020.

It's terrible that people have to live like this, with no hope and no security. And all for political games, all for the purpose of sticking it to President Obama. Rejection of live saving medical care for the most vulnerable doesn't seem very Christ-like to me. These political games and partisan cheap shots have real world consequences for real people. Perhaps Governor Deal and other Republican leaders should put down the latest Americans for Prosperity newsletter, and pick up a Bible.