Push Against Obamacare Leaves 5 Million Without Coverage

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-17/push-against-obamacare-leaves-5-million-without-coverage.html

About 5.2 million Americans will be left without health coverage because of the decision by 26 U.S. states to reject expanded Medicaid insurance programs for the poor with money provided under Obamacare.

Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina will be particularly hard-hit, as those southern states will fail to provide coverage to at least one-third of uninsured adults, according to a report from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. In Texas, more than 1 million people won’t have access to insurance provided through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, while 763,890 Floridians won’t receive health coverage.

Expansion of Medicaid eligibility was intended to provide health insurance for the working poor, those with incomes just higher than the poverty line who would struggle to pay premiums. While the U.S. Supreme Court last year upheld the law known as Obamacare, it also allowed states not to expand Medicaid.

“In states that expand their Medicaid programs, millions of adults will gain Medicaid coverage under the law,” according to the report issued yesterday by the commission affiliated with the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health research group based in Menlo Park, California. “However, with many states opting not to implement the Medicaid expansion, millions of adults will remain outside the reach of the ACA and continue to have limited, if any, option for health coverage.”