St Mary Nazareth Hospital
Go figure…
While record numbers of Americans sign up for the larger Medicaid health insurance program for the poor, financial issues are emerging for medical care providers in the two dozen states that didn’t go along with the expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
Reports out in the last week indicate the gap between those with health care coverage is widening between states that agreed to go along with the health law’s Medicaid expansion and those generally led by Republican legislatures and GOP governors that are balking at the expansion.
The moves against expansion are “beginning to hurt hospitals in states that opted out,” a report last week from Fitch Ratings said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human services has said Medicaid enrollment in the 26 states and the District of Columbia that agreed to go along with and implemented the expansion by the end of May “rose by 17 percent, while states that have not expanded reported only a 3 percent increase,” HHS said in an enrollment update for the Medicaid program.
“We expect providers in states that have chosen not to participate in expanded Medicaid eligibility to face increasing financial challenges in 2014 and beyond,” Fitch said in its July 16 report. “Nonprofit hospitals and healthcare systems in states that have expanded their Medicaid coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have begun to realize the benefit from increased insurance coverage.”
(click here to continue reading Hospitals See Troubles In Red States That Snubbed Obamacare’s Medicaid Deal – Forbes.)
Not Proclaiming Our Fall
What consistently boggles my mind is that the poor, uninsured people in Republican-leaning states still vote for Republicans. Self-hating folk presumedly. Or else the Tea-Bagger propaganda is so powerful, it has convinced them to vote against their own interests.
A report last week from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute described the coverage difference as a “gulf in percentage of people without health insurance” that is growing larger between states that expanded Medicaid and those that did not.
As of June, the report said 60 percent of the nation’s uninsured residents live in states that did not expand Medicaid. That figure was up from 49.7 percent in September of last year.