Republicans hate people who use Medicaid, and they really hate the expansion of Medicaid that allows the near-poor to get health insurance. If you talk about some of ObamaCare’s successes, e.g., in Kentucky, Republicans will respond contemptuously that most of the people who signed up are getting Medicaid. The funny thing is that they think we see that as a bad thing.
The entire point of the health care reform push is to make medical care available to people who cannot afford it. I really don’t give a crap if people who can afford health insurance have slightly lower premiums or modestly better coverage. I care that people can see a doctor who could not see a doctor before.
Arkansas is lucky to have a Democratic governor. As a result, they accepted the Medicaid expansion and set up their own exchange. As Arkansas Online (subscription) reports, the near-poor in Arkansas are enjoying a massive benefit:
Notices went out Tuesday to more than 40,000 food-stamp recipients informing them that they have been automatically assigned to a private health-insurance plan under the state’s expanded Medicaid program, the state Department of Human Services announced.
The automatic enrollments take the number of newly eligible people who have been added to the Medicaid program for coverage that will start Jan. 1 to 53,462.
That includes 49,151 who chose or were assigned to a private plan and 4,311 who were assigned to the traditional program because of they were deemed to have exceptional health needs…
…The expansion of the Medicaid program, authorized by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and approved by the Legislature this year, extended eligibility for coverage to about 250,000 adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level – $15,860 for an individual or $32,500 for a family of four.
Most of those who enroll are expected to be able to sign up for a private plan on the state’s health-insurance exchange and have their premium paid by Medicaid. About 10 percent – those identified as “medically frail” because of their health-care needs – will be assigned to the traditional Medicaid program.The 40,405 who were assigned to a plan Tuesday are among 145,000 recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program who received letters from the department in September informing them that they are eligible for coverage under the expanded program.
Those who responded and said they wanted coverage were sent a notice giving them 12 days to visit a state website, insureark.org, where they would be asked to complete a questionnaire designed to identify the medically frail. Applicants who are not found to be medically frail can then use the website to sign up for a plan.
The automatic assignments affect 38,376 people who indicated that they wanted coverage but did not visit the website, as well as 2,029 who completed the questionnaire but failed to select a plan after it was determined they were not medically frail.
How many of those 53,000 people who will now be receiving free health insurance are typical white Obama-hating southerners who listen to Glenn Beck and Mark Levin on their way to work?
What are they going to think about all this clamor about the malfunctioning federal website that they don’t have to use? What are they going to think about the people who are supposedly losing insurance plans that they like and are not allowed to go to the doctors that they prefer?
It’s going to seem like bullshit to them because their experience is that they got free health care without any problems.
ObamaCare was built to help them, and it is helping them in a massive way.
But the same people are not being helped here in Pennsylvania or throughout the rest of the Deep South. That’s because Republican governors and legislatures are standing in the way.
Maybe will have to wait until we have a new president, but the Bubba vote is ours. It’s just a matter of time.