These Trump voters are losing the health care Democrats gave them
McDowell County, North Carolina Loves Donald Trump and Showed It by Voting for Him 74-25% in 2024. Like The News and Observer note“The county of about 45,000 in the mountains of western North Carolina is still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene a year ago. Its struggles have been compounded by low levels of federal relief funding and the bungling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under Trump and his Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem.”
As we’ve discussed, pro-MAGA states are poor and rely heavily on the federal government, which means they’re poor. disproportionately funded by blue states and urban America. So when they vote for a Republican Party that has nothing but contempt for poor Americans, they are voting for a government that systematically wreaks havoc on them. And they are too ignorant to realize it.
Related | Look how much red counties depend on the government they hate
“Here in the western part of the state, which is a red zone, I’ve actually signed up people for the ACA who are very excited about having coverage,” Amy Stevens, who helps people get health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, told The News and Observer.. “But then they say, ‘You didn’t sign me up for this Obamacare, did you? I don’t want any of that.'”
Well, they got some of it – and in doing so, they got health care.
“I have so many stories of people who got insurance for the first time and were able to go to a doctor and find out they had chronic health conditions they didn’t know anything about,” Stevens added.
It was not their beloved Republican Party that made this care possible. It’s us liberals who truly believe that the American government can and should improve people’s lives. We believe that health care is not a privilege reserved for the rich, but a fundamental right for all.
We believe that no one should lose their home because they got sick, that children shouldn’t go without medicine because their parents can’t afford it, and that our collective strength comes from helping each other – not pretending that everyone can fend for themselves in this capitalist hellhole.
We pay our taxes – never complaining that so many of those taxes are siphoned off to rural America – because we believe in building a country where everyone has a fair chance, not just those who live in cities or wealthy coastal enclaves. We build the systems that keep rural hospitals open, send disaster aid to small towns, fund the Postal Service despite its inefficiency, expand broadband opportunities, and ensure that a child in McDowell County can see a doctor like a child in Manhattan.
But these conservative voters, benefiting from Democratic policies and liberal American taxpayer dollars, spit in our faces and increased their division, hatred and intolerance by voting for Trump. What ingratitude!
They got what they wanted and elected him back to power. And the result? In North Carolina, more than 1 million people are now at risk of losing their health care. McDowell County, already too dependent on the handout of blue-state taxpayers, will bear a particularly heavy burden.
This seems tragic for them. But there is a silver lining: They are finally getting the day they voted for.
