navigators aren't getting credit for their Medicaid achievements

Washington Post ^ | 10/9/2017 | Paige Winfield Cunningham

[spintreebob]

Groups charged with enrolling as many people as possible in Obamacare's insurance marketplaces say the Trump administration didn’t give them credit for signing up thousands more people for Medicaid when the administration dramatically slashed their federal funding this year.

The groups known as "navigators," created under the Affordable Care Act to help people obtain coverage, are under fire as Republicans and the Trump administration fight the 2010 law that has provided health coverage to more than 20 million Americans.

After attempts to roll back the ACA failed in Congress, Trump's Health and Human Services Department is now targeting the navigators, slashing their grant funding for the 2018 enrollment season by as much as 92 percent.

But these groups have also seen some surprising successes for which they don't think they're getting credit.

Some of the groups have fallen short of goals they submitted to HHS for the amount of people they’d help sign up on Healthcare.gov, the insurance marketplace created under the ACA. But when it came to Medicaid enrollment, many of them far exceeded expectations, helping hundreds and even thousands more people enroll in the low-income insurance program than they’d initially projected.. . . . .

This all reflects a broader reality of the ACA: It resulted in much higher Medicaid enrollment and much lower marketplace enrollment than many had initially expected.

Some conservatives have even dubbed the law the “Medicaid Expansion Act” because of the unexpected shift. Last year Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program covered 17 million more people and marketplace plans covered 10 million fewer people than the Congressional Budget Office had originally estimated.

It’s not surprising that a GOP-led administration wouldn’t view expanding the Medicaid rolls as a positive.

[spintreebob]

Manufacturing jobs and other good jobs are a great alternative in the views of some.

[Alberta's Child]

Signing people up for Medicaid doesn’t do anything to help the vast majority of working Americans who see ObamaCare as a disaster.

[DoughtyOne]

Imagine being so mentally challenged, that you think it's a feather in your cap, to sign up more people the working public will have to foot the bill for, while they pay for their own medical care coverage.

Wow, aren't we special, and Trump hasn't congratulated us.

[ExSES]

They dutifully spent OPM (Other Peoples Money) and lament a lack of recognition for their efforts! I have known such folks for 50+ years..., often ignoring their own directives in order to fund their personal vision of the "Deserving"!

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

This is laughable.

They have a job. They get paid. Unless they are on some sort of incentive system, they get paid what they get paid regardless of whether they sign up 2 people a day or ten. They are not “brave public servants” nor “dedicated public servants”. Why is this heroic?

[Harpotoo]

So the people getting affirmative action Jobs/reparations jobs created by obummer aint getting credit?

[shanover]

Government is one of few entities where one gets rewarded for failure. Its like a participation trophy for the Super Bowl loser or Little League team that came in 7th place.

[Boogieman]

So Obamacare raises insurance rates for businesses and working people, and increased Medicaid enrollment increases the debt/tax burden on those businesses and working people too.

Might be a win-win for the freeloaders, but it’s a lose-lose for every productive member of society.

[arthurus]

And MS13 doesn’t get “credit” for most of their activities.