Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) is commemorating Sexual Assault Awareness Month by vetoing a budget line item of $1.5 million passed by the legislature to fund 30 rape crisis centers around the state.

Scott spokesman Lane Wright told The Huffington Post that the governor vetoed the item because funding already exists for statewide sexual violence programs. As evidence, Wright pointed towards the state’s $6.5 million budget for rape prevention and sexual assault services and an additional $29 million allocated for domestic violence programs.

But according to the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence, much of the available funding that currently exists is spent on education and prevention, and not for the funding of crisis centers and the victims they serve. The group’s Executive Director Jennifer Dritt disputed Governor Scott’s claim that he was never given specific reasons why the additional funding was required:

We gave them information about the number of new survivors we have and we showed them that these rape crisis centers have waiting lists. Survivors are having to wait weeks, sometimes six weeks, in some programs three months to be seen. We included quotes from the programs about the waiting lists and what services they weren’t able to offer because of a lack of money. There is clearly an unmet need.

Florida’s rape crisis centers are tied to a trust fund that is fed into by fines levied against perpetrators of sexual assault. But when the fund was created by the legislature in 2003, lawmakers determined that it would not generate significant revenues for several years, instead requiring offsets by state funding. Scott’s decision to veto the funding could result in cuts of as much as $100,000 at some of the crisis centers, Dritt says.

76 people, including actor Noah Wyle, were arrested yesterday during a protest in the Cannon House Office Building. The protest, organized by the group Americans with Disabilities for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT), was focused on Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, which makes deep cuts to federal Medicaid spending.

Ryan’s proposal would cut federal Medicaid funding by $810 billion, or 22 percent, over the next ten years, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). By 2022, states would be receiving an average of 34 percent less in federal Medicaid funding than they would under current law, a rate which would continue to rise alongside health care costs. As CBPP notes, the effects of this proposal could be devastating not just to state budgets, but also to millions of Americans who rely on the program:

States would have to offset these federal funding shortfalls by substantially boosting their own contributions to Medicaid or, as is more likely, using the greater flexibility that a block grant would provide to make deep cuts to eligibility, health and long-term care services, and/or provider reimbursement rates. Last year, when Chairman Ryan included a similar Medicaid block-grant proposal in his budget, the Urban Institute estimated it would lead states to drop between 14 million and 27 million people from Medicaid by 2021 (in addition to the 17 million people who would no longer gain coverage because of the repeal of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion).

States could respond to the funding dropoff by finding more revenue to pay for it themselves, through tax increases or spending cuts, or by cutting eligibility. As one protestor said of the cuts, “they’re gonna kill us first…If we can’t stay in our home, if we can’t get the things we need through Medicaid, we will die in the streets without that type of thing.”

– Zachary Bernstein

Jesse Kelly, the Republican nominee in Arizona’s 8th congressional district best known for holding fundraisers with M16 automatic rifles, told an elderly gentleman at a campaign stop yesterday that health care is a “privilege” that people must “earn”, not a right.

Kelly, who is running to fill Gabby Gifford’s vacated seat — made the remarks while meeting with voters at the La Cholla Country Club yesterday. A senior citizen asked the candidate about his philosophical approach to health care and whether “health care is a right or a privilege?” Kelly hemmed and hawed before conceding that he believes health care “is a privilege to some extent.” He went on to say that health care is one of those “privileges you earn.”

VOTER: Do you think that health care is a right or a privilege?

KELLY: My belief system is this. The health care for anybody but especially for our nation. The highest quality and lowest cost can only be delivered without the government. What I believe is that all things we drive, we do, health care, anything, is a privilege to some extent. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, those are inalienable rights endowed by your creator. If you’re claiming a right, if you’re going to say anything’s a right, if you’re going to say you have a right to a cell phone, then who has the responsibility to pay for it? That’s what I believe.

VOTER: So you’d put health care as a privilege then?

KELLY: Absolutely, absolutely. I believe that all things we have are. But they’re privileges you earn.

Watch it:

Whether or not you agree with Kelly’s belief that health care is just a privilege, it is still a reality that far too many Americans die each year because they can’t afford access to the health care they need or receive uncompensated care that is financed by those who have insurance. Since everyone is bound to fall ill — and some may suffer an unexpected medical setback, as the Giffords tragedy illustrated — a system in which 50 million Americans are uninsured is an inefficient and quite expansive waste of tax payer dollars and resources.

Republicans are absolutely gleeful about the possibility that the Supreme Court may strike down the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that doing so would increase premiums, cause millions to lose health insurance, and ultimately raise health care spending.

Now, several health experts are warning of another unintended consequence: Medicare might not be able to function properly, potentially putting patient care and payments to doctors at risk. As some experts told NPR, the program could be thrown into complete chaos:

“The Affordable Care Act has become part and parcel of the Medicare system, encouraging providers to deliver better, more integrated, better coordinated care, at lower cost,” says Judy Feder, a public policy professor at Georgetown University and former Clinton administration health official. “To all of a sudden eliminate that would be highly disruptive.”

Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, puts it a bit more bluntly: “We could find ourselves at kind of a grand stopping point for the entire health care system.”

And it’s not just Democrats warning of potential problems. Gail Wilensky, who ran Medicare and Medicaid under President George H.W. Bush, says she doesn’t think it’s likely that the court will strike down the entire health law. But if it does, she says, “it seems like it takes everything with it, including those aspects that are only very peripherally related to the expansion of coverage.”

As Rosenbaum noted, if the law is ruled unconstitutional, “Hospitals might not get paid. Nursing homes might not get paid. Doctors might not get paid. Changes in coverage that have begun to take effect for the elderly, closing the doughnut hole might not happen. We don’t know.”

This uncertainty is already spilling over into the market: the ratings service Moody’s reported earlier this month that for-profit hospitals could be hit particularly hard if the law is overturned. As the report said, “Uninsured patients enter the health care system through the emergency room and often wind up admitted and accumulating bills they don’t have the means to pay. The continued rise in uncompensated care costs would limit operators’ revenue growth and profit margins and constrain cash flow.”

-Zachary Bernstein

The Kaiser Family Foundation is out with a new poll showing that the “increased public attention to the Affordable Care Act generated by the Supreme Court’s consideration of the law did not meaningfully change the public’s opinion of the law overall or of the specific provision at the heart of critics’ legal case against it.” In fact, despite the best efforts of conservatives and their allies to malign the law — respondents said they were exposed to more negative than positive message — and the relatively unfriendly coverage surrounding the constitutional challenge, support for the ACA remains split: 42 percent say they have a favorable opinion of the law this month and 43 percent have an unfavorable one.

While a little over half of Americans are telling polsters that the court should rule the mandate unconstitutional — a number that is unchanged since March — a majority still believe that the measure will continue to be implemented and support its individual provisions:

On the whole, these numbers may not paint the most positive picture, but given the coordinated multi-million dollar assault against reform and the relatively slow pace of implementation, it is fairly remarkable that public is almost evenly divided. And it suggests that as the benefits trickle in, the public will be at the very least open to accepting the measure more fully.