Voters just sent a message: Republicans are way out of step on health care - WaPo Editorial Board

By Editorial Board November 8 at 7:18 PM

THERE’S A long list of issues on which the Trump administration, and Republicans generally, are out of step with most Americans, yet on few of them is the chasm so broad or so deep as on health care.

On Tuesday, voters made that clear in a pair of purple states, Virginia and Maine, while for the past week Americans across the country have been surging to sign up for health-care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, which the White House and congressional Republicans have tried to repeal and, failing that, sabotage.

The health-care message was hammered home in Virginia and Maine by huge electoral margins. In exit polls across the Old Dominion, 2 out of 5 voters identified health care as their top concern — more than twice as many as named any other issue. Among those health-care voters, 77 percent favored the Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who supports Obamacare and expanding Virginia’s Medicaid program under the law; just 23 percent backed the Republican, Ed Gillespie, who opposes both.

In Maine, a referendum to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, which would extend health insurance to some 80,000 low-income adults, won in a landslide, 59 percent to 41 percent. That was a direct rebuke to the Republican governor, Paul LePage, who vetoed Medicaid expansion five times after it was approved, also five times, by the state legislature.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voters-just-sent-a-message-republicans-are-way-out-of-step-on-health-care/2017/11/08/7537bae8-c4bb-11e7-84bc-5e285c7f4512_story.html