Update, November 4, 2015: Kentucky voters elected Republican businessman Matt Bevin to office on Tuesday, potentially jeopardizing Medicaid expansion for roughly half a million people in the state. As John Oliver explained just a few days earlier, this is why all elections—local, gubernatorial, and presidential—matter. More on that below:
As he bluntly told Stephen Colbert a few weeks ago, John Oliver truly couldn’t “give less of a shit” about Donald Trump or the 2016 election.
Yet, as the Last Week Tonight host lamented on Sunday, the national conversation remains fixated on presidential candidates, largely ignoring several key races that could ultimately determine the expansion of Medicaid and Obamacare in their states. It’s an issue, according to Oliver, all Americans should pay close attention to, even if you don’t live in one of these three states.
“There are American lives at stake here, because a number of these elections could determine whether hundreds of thousands of people remain in or even fall into what’s known as the Medicaid gap,” Oliver said.
“I know that sounds like a terrible clothing chain where you can buy khaki hospital gowns sewn by children in India, but amazingly, it’s even worse than that.”
