GOP is winning the War On Poor People's Health Care

There's been two health care news stories that have gotten some attention in recent days.
The first one is that the cost of family health coverage in the U.S. now tops $20,000 a year for the first time ever.

Fewer Americans under 65 had employer coverage in 2017 than in 1999, according to a separate Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of federal data. That’s despite the fact that the U.S. economy employed 17 million more people in 2017 than in 1999.

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The other story is that the number of Americans without health insurance jumped by nearly 2 million in the past year.

Tom Miller, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said the drop in Medicaid coverage “is a positive.”

“When the economy grows Medicaid eventually drops,” he said.

One reason for the drop in health coverage is that middle-income families can’t afford the rising cost of insurance in the individual market, particularly if they don’t qualify for government subsidies, he added.

Yeh, that doesn't make much sense. Even if it's true, that still sounds like polishing a turd.
Secondly, research studies contradict this claim.

There is no relationship between changes in states’ Medicaid and CHIP enrollment and changes in their unemployment rates over the March 2017-March 2019 period. In other words, the states with especially sharp enrollment declines did not have especially sharp unemployment declines. If anything, there is a slight negative relationship between enrollment changes and unemployment-rate changes.
...
818,000 (2.3 percent) fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP in March 2019 than two years prior.. What has received less notice is that Medicaid enrollment among adults also fell by 750,000 (2.1 percent) over this period

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No time in the last 40 years has been such a large decline in Medicaid and CHIP enrollment, and there is no correlation between employment and enrollment.
However, there is a correlation between enrollment and Medicaid work requirements in Republican states.

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LePage’s administration argues that the work requirement will help people earn more and become more self-sufficient. But according to Hannah Katch, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former administrator of the California Medicaid program, 80 percent of Medicaid patients nationwide are already in working families. “The vast majority of people who aren’t working are either taking care of a family member, have a physical or behavioral health condition, or are in school, or have a combination of these factors,” said Katch. “While a work requirement is unlikely to help them get a job, it is very likely to take away health coverage from people who can’t work.”

Arkansas was one of the first states to impose work requirements for Medicaid.
A study of the program there revealed that nearly three-quarters of people kicked off of Medicaid became uninsured and remained so until the end of the two-year period.
"Lack of awareness and confusion about the reporting requirements" were the normal reasons found for people not meeting the requirements.
President Trump’s latest budget called for $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. Trump’s lawsuit to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act would end Medicaid expansion.

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For the sake of their employees

We weren’t very surprised when we found that the children most likely to be covered by public insurance were those who had a mom or dad working for a small business. Small businesses tend to have more expensive health benefits, if they offer them at all. Smaller businesses are not required to offer benefits under the Affordable Care Act. That’s kind of what the CHIP program was designed for, to fill that gap. We found that those kids whose mom or dad worked for a small business had the highest odds of having public insurance. And it increased over time quite a bit so that in the lower income bracket, we found that in 2016, four out of five kids whose mom or dad was working for a small business were covered by either Medicaid or CHIP.

Current system is against small businesses

But there are big differences in the amounts of the deductibles by employer size: Employees at small firms (up to 199 employees) get hit with an average annual deductible of $2,271; employees of large firms (200+ employees) face an average deductible of $1,412.

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@gjohnsit
They even want your life insurance assigned to them. I know. going through this process for my brother-in-law now.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

$25,000 per year. 7 years, I think, although they (not I) kicked me down to some shitty bronze plan for $21,000 per year. Again, I had no say in the matter, and when I contacted them, the date was too late to fix it.) I still pay about $650 per month for my Medicare supplements, and if I had to survive entirely on Social Security, I would have to ditch the supplements in order to eat.
I could have hired another employee, purchased some real estate, could have seen some of the world.
Blue Cross Blue Shield Texas got it all. I never met my deductible. They bent me over.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

OzoneTom's picture

@on the cusp
The system in which we live was designed over time to extract as much of any benefit from increased worker productivity and route it to those who designed, and continue to design, the system.

Deductables, fees, copays, co-insurance, worker contributions,etc. are handy concepts conjured-up for the medical cog of the system in particular.

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@OzoneTom self-employed, not a corporation, just a few employees, full time and part time.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

OzoneTom's picture

@on the cusp
Sorry I wasn't addressing your experience in particular, but being "bent over" is a normal part of the system I was attempting to describe.

One under which you needed to jump through those hoops at all -- and in the end for incomplete and sub-standard health care. We have come to accept drug monopolies/profiteering, citizens without healthcare, insurance company death panels, ie:
Dr.: The patient needs this to continue living.
Access profiteer: Not on my list, pound sand!
Cha-ching!

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@on the cusp Are your medicare supplements so high? My supplement is $127 a month and my drug coverage (the cheapest there is since I don't have any expensive prescriptions) is $14 a month. Part B costs me $135 a month deducted from my SS.

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snoopydawg's picture

Most people who are on Medicaid are already working. And usually more than one job. The work requirements are just a way to kick people off of it because it time consuming and it's not just one and done from what I have read. I also wonder how many people even received notice that they had to do it? Besides I'm not sure how they can qualify for it if their income levels are above a certain amount? Maybe the rules are a bit different for working people than for people who qualify for under the disability part?

Yes I know that it's not just the GOP that likes to kick people when they're down, but so far it's just states with republican governors that are doing this. Bastards! Hey how much money did we send across the pond today in foreign aid? At least $10 million went to Israel today and lo and behold they have great insurance.

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

@snoopydawg
My oldest grandson qualified by working on the restoration of a historic building. No wages of course, just Medicaid and food stamps.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

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OzoneTom's picture

@gjohnsit
I guess that he will be regarded as fully-rehabilitated by the Democratic Establishment now.

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boriscleto's picture

@OzoneTom

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

OzoneTom's picture

@boriscleto
The topic seems to have receded from front pages lately and the public developed amnesia about the "Gropey Uncle Joe" skeleton in the Biden household.

So odd timing for Her to be dredging it up and putting it out there now:
Hillary Clinton Defends Joe Biden After Controversy About How He Interacts with Women and Girls: 'Get Over It'

A shiv to Biden or a message to get over elites exercising their privilege? Neither, both? She is hawking a new book too, so there's that...

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Lookout's picture

@gjohnsit

on this topic?
5.5 min
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l-DnyNjL08]

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Cassiodorus's picture

Everyone here knows at this point that the primary fact of US politics in the "teens" is that the Democrats are there to put Republicans in office. During Obama's tenure they gave all levels of the Federal government as well as 900-plus state legislative seats to the Republicans. This was the consequence of putting Democrats in power in 2008.

We know this now. So yes of course the Republicans are winning the war on poor people's health care. They have no opposition. Duh.

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"The expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute fundamental necessity for the United States." - Tim Walz

snoopydawg's picture

What I think this actually is to keep Bernie from creating MFA. Of course many dems agree with him.

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

The ACA is still hanging around although there is nothing "affordable" about it unless you are entitled to a really good subsidy.

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