i was confused by this title it implies fault with the ACA but that is not the case.
Rocky Rush, a 37-year-old single father from Nebraska, has gone without health insurance for years due to the cost, and the Affordable Care Act hasn't changed that.
"I can go without medical coverage, but my children need it," Rush says.
Affordable health insurance for all Americans was one of the cornerstones and selling points of the ACA. And while the law has helped reduce the proportion of uninsured Americans from 20 to 15 percent, according to The Commonwealth Fund, it has left millions without coverage.
These uninsured Americans, falling into a gap created by the ACA, are too poor to receive assistance on their health insurance premiums, but make too much to qualify for Medicaid, putting them in a difficult predicament when costly medical bills come due.
When Rush last shopped for coverage -- while working full time at a local events center that didn't offer benefits he could afford -- he says he didn't qualify for subsidies under the ACA. But because Nebraska didn't expand Medicaid, he didn't qualify for that either.
"Both of my kids are on Medicaid," says Rush, who has a daughter, 5, and a son, 3. Rush lost that job and briefly had access to Medicaid, but once his unemployment benefits kicked in, he made too much money and again had to go without coverage.
Court Ruling Creates Gap
In 2012, the Supreme Court determined Medicaid expansion as written in the ACA couldn't be forced on states. Each state can decide whether to expand coverage. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid, 21 have not and two are debating the issue.
"The way that the law was originally intended was that there would be a continuum of coverage for people across the income spectrum," says Rachel Garfield, senior researcher for the Kaiser Family Foundation and associate director for the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. The poorest Americans would be eligible for Medicaid; those in the middle would get their coverage through an employer or the ACA marketplace; and those with the highest incomes could purchase their insurance where they saw fit.
With the Supreme Court's ruling, this continuum was interrupted.
"Because the intention was that there would be this continuum, the way the law was written was so that those at the lowest income levels are not eligible for tax credits to purchase coverage in the marketplace," Garfield explains. "So, if they're in a state that doesn't expand Medicaid, they are left with no financial assistance for coverage under the ACA."
and there it is the same republicans who now have complete control of both houses are the ones who supported the republican governors who refused to expand Medicaid or take gov't money to help the poor in their states have health care, and supposedly just to resist Pres. and anything he has to do with and that as you know it does not hurt him it hurts those in those states.
fasten your seat belts much more of a bumpy road coming. hopefully now those who oppose see that the "ABOMINATION" is not ObamaCares" but the republican denial of health care to millions by republican politicians, place the blame to who it belongs and stop playing pin the tale on the Donkeys doing that will track elephant dung all over your house.
mind boggling how those who have so little concern about your family now have even more control to continue on paths like this maybe Americans will learn next time if they are still called Americans and this is still the USA, they say they want to take the country back i guess to the CSA.
