Court ruling giving states leeway on Medicaid casts uncertainty on new coverage for millions

WASHINGTON POST ^ | 7/3/2012 | ap

[tobyhill]

Really? The Supreme Court’s big health care decision means 30 million or more uninsured Americans are soon going to have coverage? It’s far from that simple.

The ruling does point a way forward for millions who can’t get affordable coverage because they’ve been sick, they’re self-employed or they are otherwise shut out of the insurance plans that most Americans get in the workplace. But the path is clouded for millions more: the people on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder who are supposed to be reached by a major expansion of Medicaid.

[tobyhill]

but the largest tax increase in world history will remain.

[jeffc]

I still say the only people who are going to be hurt by "Zero"Care are those working whose only way to afford health insurance is to cut back on food, utility bills (less A/C and heating), driving (gasoline), etc.

These are the 1% who "can afford" insurance (according to the gub'mint) but won't because, in reality, they can't afford what is offered at the offered price without making serious cutbacks.

Quality of life? Out the window for a lot of middle-class people. Wards of the state. We must submit to our federal government masters now. Today I mourn Dependence Day.

[nevermorelenore]

and since when is INSURANCE coverage a right???!!!! I’m sick of the whole argument - we’ve been swindled and the unintelligent play into their hands and the conflict of interest that those on the DOLE being able to cast a ballot is beyond me....

[Uncle Chip]

The people who will be hurt the most will be those in the states that bow out of Obamacare. The working poor who can't afford insurance will be caught in the vise between the Feds penalizing them on their taxes and the states saying no to medicaid expansion that might cover them with insurance.

It seems that Justice Roberts must have known this and did it deliberately to them. He is such an intellectual giant.

[tobyhill]

We are already in a proxy Civil War right now and what the SCOTUS did was expose the lines. I think Gov. Perry had it exactly right, Texas should secede from the US and any other state should do the same.