- State’s poorest could be left without health insurance if Medicaid expansion is rejected, By Catherine Candisky, July 30, 2012, Columbus Dispatch: “If Gov. John Kasich decides against expanding the state’s Medicaid program, more than 600,000 of the poorest Ohioans could remain without health insurance while those with slightly higher incomes would qualify for subsidies and tax credits to buy private coverage. The potential gap was created last month when the U.S. Supreme Court, while upholding most of the federal health-care law, tossed a requirement that states expand Medicaid or face federal sanctions. The health-care overhaul was designed to cover about half of uninsured Americans through Medicaid by expanding eligibility to those earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level – largely childless adults with incomes under $15,000 a year. The rest would be required to purchase private coverage starting in 2014 – a mandate upheld by a majority of the justices – with subsidies and tax credits for those earning 100 to 400 percent of the poverty level…”
- Medicaid debate likely to be big one in Olympia, By Brad Shannon, July 30, 2012, Tacoma News Tribune: “How far to expand Medicaid coverage for poor people under the new federal health-reform law is turning into a major question in many states. In Washington, it is shaping up as a major question for the Legislature next year. Majority Democrats and Republicans are sharply split, and their differences came into sharp focus last week during a legislative work session on health reform at the Capitol. At issue was how far the state should go in providing taxpayer-paid health care for poor people who, if uninsured, drive up costs for everyone else by going to hospital emergency rooms. Medicaid now serves nearly 1.1 million Washingtonians, and upward of 1 million more could enroll in January 2014 under the federal Affordable Care Act. Most of those costs would be paid by the federal government; the state’s share would top out at 10 percent in 2020…”
Month: July 2012
State Medicaid Expansions
- Medicaid expansion may lower death rates, study says, By Pam Belluck, July 25, 2012, New York Times: “Into the maelstrom of debate over whether Medicaid should cover more people comes a new study by Harvard researchers who found that when states expanded their Medicaid programs and gave more poor people health insurance, fewer people died. The study, published online Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, comes as states are deciding whether to expand Medicaid by 2014 under the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration’s health care law. The Supreme Court ruling on the law last month effectively gave states the option of accepting or rejecting an expansion of Medicaid that had been expected to add 17 million people to the program’s rolls…”
- Study: New Medicaid expansion could be a lifesaver, By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar (AP), July 26, 2012, Columbus Dispatch: “States that expand their Medicaid programs under President Barack Obama’s health care law may end up saving thousands of lives, a medical journal report released yesterday indicates. Until now, the Medicaid debate has been about budgets and states’ rights. But a statistical study by Harvard researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine found a 6 percent drop in the adult death rate in Arizona, Maine and New York, three states that have recently expanded coverage for low-income residents along the general lines of the federal health care law. The study found that for every 176 adults covered under expanded Medicaid, one death per year would be prevented…”
Affordable Care Act and Safety-Net Hospitals
Hospitals fear cuts in aid for care to illegal immigrants, By Nina Bernstein, July 26, 2012, New York Times: “President Obama’s health care law is putting new strains on some of the nation’s most hard-pressed hospitals, by cutting aid they use to pay for emergency care for illegal immigrants, which they have long been required to provide. The federal government has been spending $20 billion annually to reimburse these hospitals – most in poor urban and rural areas – for treating more than their share of the uninsured, including illegal immigrants. The health care law will eventually cut that money in half, based on the premise that fewer people will lack insurance after the law takes effect. But the estimated 11 million people now living illegally in the United States are not covered by the health care law. Its sponsors, seeking to sidestep the contentious debate over immigration, excluded them from the law’s benefits…”