Department of Remarkable Coincidence

By Scott V. Sandford
Justice Correspondent

How's that tyrannical job-killing un-American catastrophe informally known as Obamacare going?  Apparently pretty well, according to an article in the April 18, 2016 New York Times, at least if you judge it by its goal of providing health care to those who traditionally went without because, unlike the Koch Brothers, they weren't white men who inherited a big pile:

The first full year of the Affordable Care Act brought historic increases in coverage for low-wage workers and others who have long been left out of the health care system, a New York Times analysis has found.  

There were a few discordant notes, however.  You will recall that in his tortured opinion grudgingly upholding the obvious constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, John Roberts '76, joined by three other strict constructionists and a dead guy, held that the Taxing and Spending Clause of Article I didn't, um, mean what it said in haec verba.

As a result, states were given the right to reject hundreds of billions of federal dollars and elect not to expand Medicaid coverage for those just above the poverty level.  What kind of state would do something as obviously economically ridiculous (not to mention morally suspect)?  At any rate, 19 states did not expand Medicaid.

As a result,

Gains for blacks were muted because they disproportionately live in states that chose not to expand Medicaid. About 60 percent of poor blacks live in states that did not expand Medicaid.  

So, the decision of 38 per cent of states disproportionately afflicted 60 per cent of poor blacks.  If John Roberts hadn't already told us that America has solved its racial problem, you might think this was more than a remarkable coincidence.

In another remarkable coincidence, had the good Jesuit fathers of Georgetown University not sold 272 slaves down the river to Southern states most of which haven't expanded Medicaid, the descendants of those slaves might still be living in the District of Columbia and might not have to worry about health insurance.  As it is, they'll have to look elsewhere, as long as they don't look to Georgetown University's “modest” (its description) $1,500,000,000 endowment.