Pennsylvania voters say the GOP’s health care antics cost Saccone their vote

https://thinkprogress.org/pennsylvania-voters-say-health-care-is-top-priority-704c7fcf0783/
"Election night exit polling by Public Policy Polling found that among PA-18 voters who said health care was the most important issue, Democrat Conor Lamb beat Republican Rick Saccone by a margin of 64 to 36. Saccone’s support of the Republican health care agenda — namely, efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — made 41 percent of voters less likely to vote for him. Fifty-three percent of voters disapproved of GOP efforts to repeal the health care law and 48 percent believed Republicans are trying to sabotage the law since they failed to repeal it. These numbers are all the more surprising given the fact that PA-18 is a Republican district that gave Donald Trump a 20-point victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. But as Forbes’ Bruce Japsen previously reported, health care is especially important in Western Pennsylvania. Although health care premiums have risen (a rise which officials in Pennsylvania attribute to Trump’s “refusal to make cost-sharing reduction payments for 2018”), the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) — the region’s largest non-governmental employer — has grown substantially under the ACA. Pennsylvanians — namely, those living in rural areas — have also benefited from the state’s Medicaid expansion under the ACA, which went into effect in 2015 and has been touted by health experts as means of addressing the state’s opioid crisis. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) declared the epidemic a statewide disaster emergency earlier this year. While Lamb has acknowledged that Obamacare has its flaws, he ran his campaign on fixing and building upon the law, rather than repealing it. If Medicaid expansion were repealed, approximately 585,000 Pennsylvanians would lose health coverage."

More than one-half of births in rural America are covered by Medicaid

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/12/1748454/-More-than-half-of-births-in-rural-America-are-covered-by-Medicaid
"If Republicans succeed in slashing Medicaid, they'll succeed in doing away with maternity care in much of rural America. Even now, about 45 percent of rural hospitals don’t have maternity care, with almost 1 in 10 rural counties losing hospital-based obstetrics programs between 2004 and 2014. "When rural hospitals are squeezed, they have to look at what fixed costs they can shed," Katy Kozhimannil, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health told KHN. She continued, "The fixed costs of providing obstetrics services are very clear, and very distinct." Obstetrics is expensive. And supposedly “pro-life” Republicans want to make childbirth not just more common, but more dangerous and more expensive by cutting Medicaid even further."

As Deadly Flu Sweeps Country, Koch-Backed Group Fights Paid Sick Leave Policies Nationwide