HUFFINGTON
02.16.14
TOO POOR FOR OBAMACARE
poverty level, which is $27,570
for a family of five. Even the unemployment benefits will run
out in March.
‘PEOPLE BREAK DOWN IN TEARS’
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R)
launched his political career in
2009 as a health care reform antagonist. Originally, he opposed the
Medicaid expansion, but he then
changed his mind. Last year, Scott
and the majority-Republican state
Senate backed a plan to accept federal dollars to expand the program.
The GOP-led state House of Representatives refused to go along.
Now, 764,000 low-income
adults in Florida will remain
without insurance because of the
coverage gap, according to the
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. And they’re beginning to
understand the tragic consequences of that public battle.
At Miami’s Borinquen Medical
Centers for low-income and uninsured patients, Jason Connor
sees hopes crushed as people who
thought Obamacare could help
them at long last learn otherwise.
“We’ve had people break down
in tears at our desk,” said Connor,
who is under contract with the
community health centers to do
States could opt out
of one of Obamacare’s
crucial provisions: The
expansion of Medicaid
coverage to anyone making
less than 133 percent of
the federal poverty level,
or about $15,300 a year
for a single person.
Affordable Care Act outreach and
enrollment activities through his
company, Choice Returns.
Seventy-eight percent of the
50,000 patients that Borinquen Medical Centers treat every year are uninsured, Connor
said. About 20 percent of those
who visit their facilities looking
to apply for benefits fall into the
coverage gap, he added.
“Folks are frustrated and
they’re angry, and they’ll curse at
you even though you have nothing
to do with it,” he said.
GOP REVOLTS
When the Supreme Court ruled
that states could opt out of the
Medicaid expansion, Florida,
Texas and nearly the entire South
turned away billions in federal
dollars offered for broadening the