LEFT
OUT
poverty line — currently, $14,856
or less — are supposed to be able
to enroll.
Were the Obamacare expansion enacted today, some 17 million people would gain the right
to coverage under Medicaid or
the Children’s Health Insurance
program, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Laura
Johnson would be among them.
But the policy does not take effect
until 2014. And in several states,
including Louisiana, it increasingly appears the policy may not take
effect at all.
This is in large part because of
a landmark Supreme Court decision earlier this year. The court
affirmed Obamacare’s key mechanism — the authority of the federal government to mandate that
people buy some form of health
insurance or pay penalties — but
the justices overturned another
crucial provision: They decreed
that states have the right to opt
out of the Medicaid expansion, a
step that would deprive people
like Johnson of care.
Though Medicaid is jointly run
and financed by the states and the
federal government, Washington
is obligated to cover the full costs
of expanding the Medicaid rolls
HUFFINGTON
02.03.13
over the first three years. Even
as the federal share gradually declines over subsequent years, by
2022 Washington would still be
on the hook for 90 percent of the
additional costs. But the court
said states could turn down that
federal money and continue to run
their Medicaid programs as they
do now, setting their own standards for eligibility.
Since that ruling, Republican
governors in nine states — Texas,
Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi,
Georgia, South Carolina, South Dakota, Maine and Louisiana — have
indicated that this is what they
intend to do.
Here in Louisiana, Gov. Bobby
Jindal, who now chairs the Repub-
“I JUST LIVED PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK. HOW YOU GOING TO GO TO
THE DOCTOR WITH NO MONEY?”
lican Governors Association, has
criticized the Medicaid expansion
as a threat to taxpayers and an
incursion on his state’s right to set
its own policies.
“That’s crazy,” said Johnson. “I
don’t understand why he’s doing
that. He’s not thinking about poor
people like us.”
Jindal declined requests for
comment. But in public state-