And THIS is the real SCANDAL the media should cover in 2014!!!!
The Medicaid gap hits home in red states
Joan McCarter
Dec 9, 2013
The politically motivated decision by Republican governors to refuse the Medicaid expansion money offered under the Affordable Care Act is now being felt every day by people seeking health insurance, and the people trying to help them. It's the dark cloud surrounding the silver lining of a functioning HeatlhCare.gov, and the masses of people now flocking to sign up.
Navigators are forced to tell more and more people that they probably won't be able to get covered because their states, all of which had a GOP-controlled legislative chamber or governor, have refused to expand Medicaid. Lynne Thorp, who is overseeing the University of South Florida's navigator program in that state, told TPM that about one in four people who contact her team fall into that Medicaid gap.
"Those are hardest phone calls because it doesn't make any sense to them," Thorp said. "We have to explain that they fall into this gap where this program can't assist them." ...
Florida and Texas lead the nation in uninsured. The two states also lead the nation in dollars lost by their refusal to expand. Now they'll lead the nation in people really pissed off when they realize that the only reason they can't get health coverage is because they are represented by assholes.
Yes, Obamacare and Medicaid expansion will be campaign issues in 2014 and 2016.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/09/1261429/-The-Medicaid-gap-hits-home-in-red-nbsp-states#
Health reform gap: 5 million without health care in states that opted out
by The Associated Press
on December 30, 2013
HARRISBURG, Pa. — About 5 million people will be without health care next year that they would have gotten simply if they lived somewhere else in America.
They make up a coverage gap in President Barack Obama's signature health care law created by the domino effects of last year's Supreme Court ruling and states' subsequent policy decisions.
The court effectively left it up to states to decide whether to open Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor and disabled, to more people, primarily poor working adults without children.
Twenty-five states declined. That leaves 4.8 million people in those states without the health care coverage that their peers elsewhere are getting through the expansion of Medicaid, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation estimate. More than one-fifth of them live in Texas alone, Kaiser's analysis found.
Among those in the gap is Cheryl Jones, a 61-year-old part-time home-care worker from Erie, Pa., who makes do without health insurance by splitting in half pills for high blood pressure, which she gets from a friend, not a pharmacist. She'd also like to visit a dentist to fix her broken partial dentures. A new pair of glasses might be nice, too.
"There are a lot of us who need medical help now," she said. "I need new glasses, I need to go to a dentist, I need my medicine. ... Think about us working poor. We pay our taxes."
read more: http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2013/12/health_reform_gap_5_million_wi.html
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