Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D-WV) (Credit: Raw Story)

Speaking at St. Francis hospital and flanked by nurses, doctors, and hospital administrators, Tomblin laid out the medical and financial case for expanding Medicaid eligibility — a conclusion that he reached after commissioning a study to examine such a move’s effects on West Virginia. “Expansion will allow us to provide insurance coverage to 91,500 West Virginians,” said Tomblin.

Indeed, West Virginia has much to gain and very little to lose by embracing the Obamacare provision. The state has abysmal health demographics, and over half of West Virginia’s uninsured population lives below 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). These poor and vulnerable populations would gain access to health coverage under the Medicaid expansion, leading the Kaiser Family Foundation to conclude that expansion will reduce the number of uninsured West Virginians by a staggering 67 percent.

Those numbers likely led Tomblin to his decision. But the moderate Democrat has an advantage that governors of other conservative — and highly uninsured — states don’t: the almost assured support of his legislature. Democrats hold a supermajority in the state Senate and an eight seat edge in the House of Delegates, and both of West Virginia’s U.S. senators also support expanding Medicaid, making intraparty barriers unlikely.

The same cannot be said of Republican Govs. Jan Brewer (AZ) and Rick Scott (FL), who have been lobbying for Medicaid expansion after intense pressure from hospital associations and advocates for the poor. Their Republican-controlled state legislatures have been bending over backwards to stop it from happening. Although there is no hard deadline for expanding Medicaid under Obamacare, many of these states’ legislative sessions are quickly coming to an end — meaning that if no agreement is reached soon, they won’t receive the additional federal funds and won’t be able to extend coverage to low-income residents for at least the first full year of Obamacare implementation.

Texas and Louisiana face similar issues. Although some GOP lawmakers in those states are contemplating Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe’s (D) alternative “private option” — which would take federal money and use it to help an expanded Medicaid pool buy private insurance — those efforts also remain in limbo, as former and current Republican presidential aspirants Govs. Rick Perry (TX) and Bobby Jindal (LA) have oscillated between flat-out rejecting expansion and being coy about their intentions.

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courtesy of Ryan Revock and the Arizona Daily Wildcat

Dean Saxton, a junior, is notorious for giving inflammatory sermons in the middle of campus. This time, he argued that women are responsible for their rapes because of the way they dress and act. Saxton’s stunt may have been planned in response to the “Take Back the Night” protest against sexual violence scheduled Tuesday night.

Saxton cut right to the chase, bluntly stating that girls who dress like “a whore” have it coming:

Saxton, a junior studying classics and religious studies, said his sermon was meant to convey that “if you dress like a whore, act like a whore, you’re probably going to get raped.”

“I think that girls that dress and act like it,” Saxton said, “they should realize that they do have partial responsibility, because I believe that they’re pretty much asking for it.”

According to the Daily Wildcat, the Dean of Students received “stacks of written complaints, emails and multiple phone calls regarding Saxton’s sermon about women.” Many students directly confronted Saxton, even trying to pull down his sign. Saxton embraced the attention on his Twitter account, posting a screenshot of an article about the Take Back the Night with the comment, “The whores are out.” In other sermons, Saxton has cursed people who are gay, have pre-marital sex, masturbate or have lustful thoughts. His Twitter account is rife with anti-Muslim sentiment, as well; last month he tweeted, “There will come a time when the sword will be put to the heathen.”

However hateful his speech may be, university attorneys told angry students that Saxton is exercising his right to free speech, and has yet to violate the student code of conduct.

While Saxton’s language is more incendiary than the norm, victim-blaming is very much a mainstream habit. The string of recently publicized rapes of high school and college students have exposed how communities shame victims rather than condemn the perpetrators. Dartmouth College is currently dealing with a similar backlash to anti-sexual violence protesters, who received rape and death threats amid a slew of misogynistic and ignorant comments posted online.

University of Arizona, while hardly condoning Saxton’s extremist display, has struggled with its own rape culture. Last year, fraternity brothers were indicted for sexual abuse, sexual assault and kidnapping of another UA student, but the charges were later dismissed. Many other students have reported abuse — 29 reports of sexual abuse and 53 reports of rape in one year — to the on-campus sexual assault crisis center.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a vocal opponent of President Obama’s health reform law, surprised her Republican colleagues when she announced her support for Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion at the beginning of this year. Since then, Brewer has been attempting to broker a deal with the legislators in her state, who will ultimately need to approve the legislation to expand the public health insurance program.

And as negotiations over Arizona’s Medicaid expansion plan go back and forth, some of the state’s powerful lobbyists are attempting to attach amendments to the proposal to suit their own interests — including a totally unrelated attack on Planned Parenthood, which has become a symbol in the GOP’s ongoing crusade against women’s health.

Obamacare proponents warn that additional amendments could threaten to derail the whole expansion process altogether, since Democratic lawmakers may not be willing to pass a bill with unrelated riders. Nonetheless, one of the state’s most powerful lobbying groups is jumping on the opportunity to target Planned Parenthood, regardless of the potential consequences for Arizona’s low-income residents who may be forced to go without health care if the expansion doesn’t go through:

The Center for Arizona Policy is using an opinion from the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal-defense organization, to argue that the draft Medicaid legislation should be amended to disqualify the non-profit women’s health provider Planned Parenthood from receiving public money. [...]

[Cathi Herrod, the center’s president] said her organization, a conservative Christian-based group that wields influence with GOP lawmakers, is not taking a position on Medicaid expansion and wouldn’t comment on the possibility that such an amendment could sink the plan.

“Our request is to include language guaranteeing that no funding to an abortion provider results from Medicaid expansion,” Herrod said. “Any dollar that goes to an abortion provider for any service frees up another dollar to subsidize abortion.”

Planned Parenthood gets a fraction of its funding from Medicaid but could pick up more patients if the state broadens eligibility. Although Herrod argues that funding to the clinics indirectly supports abortion, Planned Parenthood officials say they lose money on every Medicaid patient because of reimbursement levels.

The proposed amendment to Arizona’s Medicaid expansion is very similar to a measure that Brewer signed into law last year, which also sought to prevent federal Medicaid dollars from going to Planned Parenthood. Last month, a federal judge blocked that law from taking effect — since state-level Medicaid programs cannot exclude qualified providers from providing essential heath care to the low-income Americans who need it, Arizona is not permitted to target Planned Parenthood simply because the national organization performs abortions.

But even Arizona’s failed record won’t deter the abortion opponents in the state from continuing to go after Planned Parenthood. Bryan Howard, the president of Planned Parenthood Arizona, sharply criticized the Center for Arizona Policy and Herrod for pursuing a “failed legislative strategy” that could jeopardize the state’s Medicaid expansion. “She has to know that she is putting health-care access for 400,000 people at risk,” Howard told the Arizona Republic.