Another 500,000 people get health care in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania's Republican Governor Tom Corbett has belatedly decided to accept the Affordable Care Act's help to expand health care coverage for about half a million low income people in the state.   As a few other states have done, Corbett worked out a modified plan with the ACA administrators whereby the government will provide subsidies to allow low-income individuals to purchase private insurance.

Corbett is the ninth Republican governor to agree to a cooperative plan with the ACA.   There are 25 states that have not accepted the Medicaid expansion offer;   22 of those states have Republican governors.  The three with Democratic governors have Republican controlled legislatures that have prevented it.

One of those 22 is Georgia -- and Gov. Nathan Deal is in a tight race for re-election in November.   Republicans have done such a good job of demonizing anything that has Obama's name connected to it that it's not proving to be much of a negative factor for Deal -- and it should be.

Some predictors are showing as much as a 65% chance for the Republicans taking control of the senate.   I don't understand how the electorate can be so stupid as to keep voting against their own best interests.   But there is one statistical guru who is predicting a 70% chance for Democrats to hold the senate.   His name is Sam Wang, a member of the Princeton Election Consortium, and in the 2012 senate races he was 100% right, where Nate Silver got only 30 of 33 correct.

Conventional wisdom is that in mid-term elections, with no presidential race on the ballot, voter turn-out is the key to winning national elections.   The prospects of Mitch McConnell as senate majority leader is just too awful to contemplate.    So get out the vote.

Ralph