LEFT
OUT
only people made eligible by
Obamacare, but also people who
have been eligible all along but
perhaps had not known how to
apply. Nationally, just 62 percent
of people eligible for Medicaid are
actually getting benefits, according to an estimate published in the
New England Journal of Medicine
in 2010.
While the federal government
is obligated to cover the full costs
of newly eligible people added to
the Medicaid rolls, people who are
already eligible would be governed
by the existing split: The states
on average absorb 43 percent of
those costs.
“The state’s complaint is, ‘We
said we would cover these people
and now we’re going to have to
actually cover them and pay for
them,’” said Stan Dorn, a senior
fellow at the Urban Institute.
Marci Roe worries about the consequences of not paying for them.
As executive director of the Volunteer Health Clinic in Austin, she
witnesses every day the full dimension of the costs borne by people
who live without health insurance.
“They lead sicker lives,” she
said. “It affects their ability to
work, their ability to go to school,
to basically support themselves.”
HUFFINGTON
02.03.13
WHY DID YOU WAIT SO LONG?
Laura Johnson’s working life traces
the arc of an American economy
that has for decades replaced jobs
that paid middle-class wages and
provided health insurance with
low-wage service sector positions
that lack benefits.
Johnson was raised in the town
of Homer, La., about 35 miles
southeast of here. Her father
worked as a machine operator at a
plywood company. He came home
with dirt under his fingernails and
aching joints, but also a paycheck
large enough to allow his wife to
stay home and look after their seven children. His earnings included
health coverage and a retirement
savings program.
After high school, Johnson enrolled at Grambling State University, a historically African-American university, where she studied
to be a teacher. In her junior year,
her father died, felled by heart
trouble at 45. De vastated, she fell
into depression.
“I loved my daddy more than
life itself,” she said, recalling
how she would ride around in his
truck while he made his rounds. “I
couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. My
dad was my world.”
She dropped out of school and
moved to Washington, D.C., where
she moved in with an aunt who