Credit: Getty

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland,

by Jonathan M. Metzl

Trevor was dying. Liver disease and hepatitis C were the causes. Tennessee had not accepted the expansion of Medicaid provided for in the Affordable Care Act, and thus Trevor, a 41-year-old white Tennessean, had gone without health coverage. He strongly supported the decision of his state’s Republican officials on this matter. Had he lived a few miles away, in Kentucky—whose then-governor, a Democrat, had expanded Medicaid with an executive order—he would have been eligible for coverage and thus care that might well have saved his life.

But Trevor wouldn’t have accepted it. He “would rather die” than “support Obamacare or sign up for it.” Why? “We don’t need any more government in our lives,” Trevor answered, before fleshing out his response and fully revealing his thinking: “And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.” And there you have the […]