A big Medicaid gap looms in Obama health care law

Associated Press ^ | July 1, 2013 | Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar

[MrChips]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly 2 in 3 uninsured low-income people who would qualify for subsidized coverage under President Barack Obama's health care law may be out of luck next year because their states have not expanded Medicaid.

An Associated Press analysis of figures from the Urban Institute finds a big coverage gap developing, with 9.7 million out of 15 million potentially eligible adults living in states that are refusing the expansion or are still undecided with time running short.

That a majority of the neediest people who could be helped by the law may instead remain uninsured is a predicament unforeseen by Obama and congressional Democrats who designed a sweeping extension of the social safety net. The law's historic promise of health insurance for nearly all U.S. residents would not be fulfilled as envisioned.

It's the direct consequence of last summer's Supreme Court decision that gave states the right to opt out of the Medicaid expansion, combined with unyielding resistance to the law from many Republican state lawmakers.

Expanding Medicaid is essential to Obama's two-part strategy for covering the uninsured.

Starting next year, middle-class people without job-based coverage will be able to get tax credits to help them buy private insurance. But the law calls for low-income people to enroll in Medicaid, expanded to accommodate a largely excluded group: adults with no children at home. Expanded Medicaid would cover about half the 25 million to 30 million people who could be helped by the law.

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have decided to accept the expansion, which is fully financed by Washington for the first three years and phases down gradually to a 90 percent federal share.

Among those are six states led by Republican governors . . .

[MrChips]

"financed by Washington."

Uh huh. That means finaced by us.

[Texan5]

So, either the people living in the states not in thrall to obamascare will buy a private policy of their own choice-or, if they just have to join a herd, they can move to a state that will accommodate them-sounds like a winner to me...

[Buckeye McFrog]

So they will just have to move to states like New York and Cal-eee-fohr-nya that have done this.

Double-reverse-Cloward-Piven-JuJutsu on y’all.

[RetiredTexasVet]

No problem, let them move to New England states or West Coast states.

[AZLiberty]

It’s “funny” that this Medicaid expansion is called “voluntary”, in the sense that a state can opt out. But if they opt out they get no money and their residents still have to pay the taxes that fund the other states’ Medicaid pork. Surely there’s an equal protection issue here that some legal eagle could follow up on.