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Friday, March 28, 2014

GOP Opposition To Medicaid Expansion Is Deadly. (The Economist)



The Confederate States of America
Wrong then. Wrong now.

"Next time, let 'em secede"

***

"In 2011 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that Obamacare would lower the number of uninsured by 21m in 2014 and 34m in 2021. Now the CBO is gloomier: it says the law will shrink the ranks of the uninsured by 13m in 2014 and 25m in 2021. More than 30m Americans will still lack coverage after Obamacare is fully implemented. The law's drafters assumed that the states would all expand Medicaid, so the subsidies only kick in above that $11,700 threshold. But after the Supreme Court said the states could refuse to expand Medicaid, half of them (mostly Republican-led) did just that. In those states, millions of people will not qualify for Medicaid but are too poor to qualify for Obamacare subsidies.....The launch of Healthcare.gov in October went so badly that the CBO cut its estimate for the number of enrollees this year from 7m to 6m....The worry is that too few healthy people will enroll, prompting insurers to raise prices next year....He has also tweaked his reform in ways that may appease angry voters in the short run, but make it less likely to work in the long run....Mr Obama has also done things likely to make insurance more expensive....Just 19% of Americans said the law has helped them. More continue to oppose Obamacare than support it, though only three in ten favour scrapping it. So long as power in Washington is divided and the parties are polarised, the law can neither be amended nor repealed. It is up to Mr Obama to fix it using his administrative powers; he does not have much time." The Economist


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