W. Va. reliance on Obama law makes it tough for GOP senator
West Virginia likes to say it’s “almost heaven.” Less idyllic is the spot its Republican senator, Shelley Moore Capito, is in as she decides whether to back her party’s effort to bulldoze Democrat Barack Obama’s health care law.
Capito’s home state has shifted strongly toward the GOP in recent years, giving Donald Trump a runaway 42-point victory over Hillary Clinton in the November presidential election. That leaves little doubt about its fondness for him and the head start Capito should have when she runs for re-election in 2020.
But it’s also one of the poorest and sickest states in the U.S., relying heavily on Obama’s 2010 statute, which Trump and top Senate Republicans want to repeal and replace.
West Virginia is saddled with one of the country’s lowest median incomes and has some of the worst rates of unemployment, drug overdose deaths, life expectancy, smoking, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and disabilities. Around 3 in 10 of the 1.8 million West Virginians are on Medicaid, making it the most dependent state on the health insurance program for the poor, disabled and nursing home residents that the GOP bill would cut.
“I didn’t come to Washington to hurt people. Health care is something I care deeply about,” Capito said in an interview. But she added, “I do think changes and reforms in Medicaid are necessary. We can’t have an open pocketbook.”
Her stance has attracted the attention of liberal, labor, patient and provider groups, who are using social media, advertising and demonstrations to pressure Capito. A recent sit-in at her Charleston office led to six arrests.
Fellow Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who easily carried West Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary last year, is headlining a health care rally in the state on Sunday. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee ran a TV ad featuring the mother of a grown daughter with cerebral palsy saying she “wants to cry” when she hears Capito may support Medicaid cuts, and liberal MoveOn.org, the state AFL-CIO and others are using #savemecapito on Twitter to whip up opposition to the GOP bill.
And while aides say she’s held numerous meetings with constituents, advocacy groups and local officials, like many Senate Republicans, she avoided this week’s July 4 parades — normally a staple of politicking— and skipped town halls this year.
“So far, she’s been a person of ethics and morals to try to do the right thing for West Virginians,” said Debrin Jenkins, executive director of the West Virginia Rural Health Association, which advocates for health care in the state’s many small communities. Jenkins said the GOP bill would “gut” affordable health coverage in West Virginia.
An amiable and popular moderate in Congress since 2001, Capito is a devoted coal industry defender and daughter of former threetime Gov. Arch Moore. With her most serious re-election threat perhaps posed by a conservative in the GOP primary, many consider her a team player unlikely to help derail a paramount Republican goal like toppling Obama’s law.