The 12 Medicaid Expansion Holdout States Remain Stubborn.
Obamacare was not written to deal with states refusing to adopt the Medicaid expansion and that has left millions without healthcare. (NY Times)
“Fixing the Medicaid expansion gap may face long political odds because it targets benefits to a smaller group of people in states that typically vote Republican. Only three Democratic senators — Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both of Georgia, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin — represent a state that hasn’t expanded Medicaid.
“If you were thinking in strictly political terms, advocating for Medicare expansion has a lot more political gold than Medicaid expansion,” said Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from Texas, which has nearly 1.5 million people shut out of Medicaid eligibility, the most of any state. “But that is why we as Democrats need to redouble our efforts to focus on this vulnerable population.””
Obamacare was given reprieve after reprieve by the Supreme Court and finally everyone acknowledges Obamacare is here to stay which is great because it has helped and continues to help millions of people gain access to affordable healthcare who would have otherwise gone uninsured. The law makes sense and states that have expanded Medicaid have healthier populations and have fewer hospitals in danger of closing. The law dramatically changed the lives of America’s most vulnerable populations and now the effort has to concentrate on expanding coverage in the 12 holdout states.
