Its progressive. Those who can’t pay... they get covered.
I’ve made the point often just by expanding Medicaid, we could have fixed the uninsured crisis in this country without inconveniencing the 95% that was always insured.
And such an expansion would have had bipartisan support. But the Democrats decided what the rest of America had wasn’t good enough and they took a giant wrecking ball to it.
The funny thing about Medicaid is enrolling in it requires no hassle, no navigating through confusing websites, comparing plan levels, options and prices and no extensive paperwork to fill out or premiums to pay. And enrollment is open year around.
Its everything Obamacare should have been but wasn’t.
That is in fact what was done. Nearly 2/3 of those who have signed up for Obamacare actually will be insured through medicaid not through a private insurer.
Medicare/medicaid is a big reason why healthcare is so screwed up in the US in the first place. These programs pay ~50% of the cost of service so the other 50% gets cost shifted onto the bills of privately insured patients. If a small percentage of patients were on medicare/medicaid then this would be tolerable. There are, however, ~110 million people on these programs. That amount of cost shifting has utterly broken the system.