Organizers from all over the country have been battling to save Medicaid, and Arkansans have had some success. One of the few Southern states to accept the Medicaid expansion, there's bipartisan opposition to every Senate bill and organizers are working constantly to make sure that their Senators know they're opposed to any cuts to the existing system. Here's the interview:
Neil Sealy from the "Lipstick on a Pig" action to save Medicaid.
Outtakes:
“The thing is we've got to keep the governor--while he's done some bad things--nevertheless has been consistent in his concerns about the bills that he has seen coming from the House and Senate and has spoken about how it would harm Arkansas. And so they’re not listening to even our governor, that's from the same party, and that's worrisome. There's an editorial in the paper today from a former Democratic governor.
Many of the medical lobbies have spoken up and have urged both Senators to not cut Medicaid and not cut the expansion.
We have done several actions at the offices, they ranged from when the Senate first began voting we did a “lipstick on a pig” action where we created a pig and had "House Version of the Bill" on it and said basically you can't put lipstick on a pig. We brought it into the offices of both Senators and turned in about 1000 postcards with the pig present and then we also participated in a four-hour marathon of people cycling in and out of both Senators' offices about two weeks later, there have been other actions that other groups have been doing and we are planning on Monday to do a march and candlelight vigil for Medicaid and Medicare to commemorate the 52nd anniversary.”
Interviews for Resistance is a syndicated series of interviews with organizers, agitators and troublemakers, available twice weekly as text and podcast.