From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/medicaid-expansion_n_2103384.html
Jeffrey Young
11/09/2012
If you’re poor and you live in the South, there’s a good chance health care reform won’t reach you. Intransigent Republican governors from Florida to Texas remain steadfastly resistant to President Barack Obama’s plan to expand Medicaid to their neediest constituents.
The health care reform law Obama enacted in 2010 depends heavily on Medicaid, a joint federal-state health benefits program, to reach the goal of near-universal health care. If every state participated, 17 million uninsured people would gain coverage through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program between 2014 and 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The law extends Medicaid to anyone who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $14,856 this year.
But at least a half-dozen governors say they simply won’t go along with the law. When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare in June, justices ruled states could opt out of the Medicaid expansion. The decision threatens to leave 3 million of the poorest Americans without health coverage, the Congressional Budget Office predicts.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Texas Gov. Rick Perry — all Republicans — are on record so far as resistors to expanding Medicaid, according to an analyses updated Thursday by the Advisory Board, a Washington-based health care consulting company.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/medicaid-expansion_n_2103384.html
