Religious leaders demand: Expand Medicaid, and save money

Rev. Raphael Warnock (AP)

Dan Mangan | @_DanMangan
Friday, 30 May 2014 | 3:59 PM ET

A group of religious leaders is demanding that states that haven't yet embraced Obamacare's Medicaid expansion do so, calling the lack of health coverage in those states for poor adults "a moral crisis" that shouldn't be subject to political feuding.

Those leaders also said that even if politicians don't buy into the moral argument, the money that would flow to those 24 remaining states and businesses if they expanded Medicaid eligibility to more than 5 million adults is just too good to pass up.

"The fact is, we cannot afford to not expand Medicaid," said the Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, during a conference call with reporters and other religious leaders.

"I don't think in the past 50 years we have seen the kind of obstruction of a law passed by Congress, supported by the Supreme Court, as we are seeing right now now," said Warnock, whose church was previously headed by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. "It's not just politically wrong, it's morally wrong. It's not the difference between left and right, it's the difference between right and wrong."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101715324

There are better arguments to expand Medicaid but this is also a legitimate one.