![]() ![]() ![]() First, states operate their own Medicaid programs, which means they are largely insulated from the federal government’s IT issues. Two main factors account for Medicaid’s early success. In Kentucky, four out of every five of the state’s 26,000 newly insured can thank Medicaid for their benefits. In Washington, the Medicaid expansion accounts for half of its 35,000 new enrollees. Of the 37,000 people who have thus far gained health coverage in New York, for example, two-thirds qualified through Medicaid. Thus far, 25 states (including D.C.), have opted for expansion, while 26 (mostly red) states remain on the sidelines. While the federal health exchange languishes in an unflattering public spotlight, Medicaid expansion is off to a flying start. The ACA changed this, expanding Medicaid to all adults age 19-64 who are below 138 percent of the federal poverty. Over the years, some states have opted to extend coverage to parents of poor children, particularly if they are working, but there has never been a national health insurance safety net for able-bodied childless adults. Traditionally, however, the program, which operates as a partnership between the federal government and the states, has been mostly limited to children, pregnant women, the disabled and certain elderly adults dually-eligible for Medicare. ![]() Since its creation in 1965, Medicaid has served as America’s health insurance safety net for poor families. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2023 demands.Amid the clamor over Obamacare’s early and embarrassing IT struggles, a quieter victory for the Affordable Care Act is well underway. Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2023 demands. Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do. On any measure you can think of, this is a huge and undercovered success story.īy signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from Mother Jones and our partners. It’s better coverage and it costs the taxpayers less. This is great news all around since we’d always prefer having people insured by their employer rather than buying through the exchange. The only thing that changed in the fourth quarter of 2013 was the introduction of Obamacare.īottom line: Obamacare may have missed CBO’s target for exchange enrollment by 7 million or so, but much of this is because it beat CBO’s target for private insurance by 24 million. But the economy has been puttering along at about the same pace ever since 2012. Was this due to the economic recovery? Probably a bit of it. After four years of private coverage hovering around 61 percent of the population, it jumped up to 66 percent within the space of a single year. Thanks to Obamacare’s individual mandate spurring the purchase of individual coverage and its employer mandate spurring an increase in employer coverage, total private coverage increased by more than 16 million through the middle of 2015. They also predicted that Obamacare would lead to the loss of 8 million people from private insurance coverage by 2016.īut that didn’t happen. We’ve heard a lot about Obamacare not meeting the original enrollment projections published by the CBO in 2010, but those aren’t the only projections that CBO published. I’ve mentioned this in passing a couple of times, but it really deserves a short post of its own. ![]() Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |