Tag Archives: Medicaid expansion

‘Enormous Policy Failure’: States Throw Hundreds of Thousands—Including Many Children—Off Medicaid

“We knew this was coming,” wrote one policy expert. “But we still treat these burdens like they’re unavoidable natural disasters.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 5-27-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: Ted Eytan/CC

With a green light from the federal government, states across the U.S. have thrown hundreds of thousands of low-income people off Medicaid in recent weeks—and many have lost coverage because they failed to navigate bureaucratic mazes, not because they were no longer eligible.

More than a dozen states, including Florida and other Republican-led states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, have begun removing people from Medicaid as part of the “unwinding” of a pandemic-era federal policy that temporarily barred governments from kicking people off the program.

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15 Million People Could Lose Coverage as Nightmarish Medicaid ‘Purge’ Begins

“I feel sick,” said one physician. “Medicaid is not enough: we need seamless, lifelong universal care now.”

By Jake Johnson.  Published 4-1-2023 by Common Dreams

Image: CC

Beginning on Saturday, states across the U.S. will start the process of stripping Medicaid coverage from millions of people as pandemic-related protections lapse, part of a broader unraveling of the safety net that was built to help families withstand the public health crisis and resulting economic turmoil.

Medicaid’s continuous coverage requirements were enacted early in the Covid-19 pandemic to help vulnerable people maintain insurance amid the health emergency, resulting in record-high Medicaid enrollment.

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Direct democracy can force governments to better represent the people – but it doesn’t always work out

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has led to a push for citizens initiatives to enshrine abortion rights.
Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

 

Susan Stokes, University of Chicago

In August 2022, a statewide referendum in Kansas saw citizens overwhelmingly reject a plan to insert anti-abortion language into the state’s constitution. It comes as a slew of similar votes on abortion rights are planned in the coming months – putting the issue directly to the people after the Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.

But are referendums and citizens initiatives good for democracy? It may seem like an odd question to pose on International Day for Democracy, especially at a time when many feel democracy is imperiled both in the U.S. and around the world. Continue reading

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Successful GOP Repeal of ACA Would Strip Health Coverage From Millions and Give Top 0.1% a Massive Tax Cut—During a Pandemic

“If Trump gets the Supreme Court to strike down ACA, the richest 0.1% would get a tax cut of $198,000 a year, and Big Pharma would get a tax cut of $2.8 billion. But millions of seniors would pay billions more for prescription drugs, and 20 million would lose their health insurance.”

By Kenny Stancil, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-6-2020

Health Care Reform Law Protests at the US Supreme Court in 2012. Photo: Elvert Barnes/CC

New research released Tuesday shows that if the Supreme Court next month sides with the Trump administration and 18 state attorneys general seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act, more than 20 million people would lose health insurance and millions more would be forced to pay more for healthcare—in the middle of a pandemic—while Big Pharma and the richest 0.1% would enjoy major tax cuts.

“The stakes in this case, always extraordinarily high”—wrote Tara Straw and Aviva Aron-Dine in one of several reports (pdf) published this week by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)—”are even higher now amidst a global pandemic and an economic crisis that has caused more people to lose health insurance and become eligible for help from the ACA.” Continue reading

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‘People, Poor Disabled People in Particular, Are Going to Die’: Trump Takes Axe to Medicaid

“Trump wants to destroy Medicaid while claiming to save it. This fiendish scheme is an Orwellian fable conjured up by the most shameless pack of liars to ever occupy our government.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 1-30-2020

CMS Administrator Seema Verma with President Donald Trump in 2018. Photo: White House

The Trump administration on Thursday unveiled a plan allowing states to convert federal Medicaid funding into block grants, a longstanding conservative goal that critics warn could have deadly consequences for millions of vulnerable people who rely on the healthcare program as a major source of income.

Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), announced the so-called “Healthy Adult Opportunity” initiative in a statement claiming the policy will “improve health outcomes and care” for low-income people. Continue reading

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‘Cruelty Is the Point’: Trump Takes Aim at Medicaid With Plan That Could Harm Millions

“The president’s war on healthcare knows no bounds.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 1-24-2020

President Donald Trump speaks during an event on kidney health at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on July 10, 2019 in Washington, D.C. Screenshot: YouTube

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to intensify its assault on Medicaid by granting certain states permission to convert federal funding for the program into block grants, a move critics slammed as a cruel and likely illegal attack on vulnerable people.

Politico reported Thursday that the plan, which could be finalized as early as next week, would allow the 37 states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to seek waivers to convert funding into fixed sums that could limit states’ flexibility to increase spending in response to public need. Continue reading

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How undoing ‘Obamacare’ would harm more than the health of Americans

Open enrollment for health care in the ACA marketplaces ended at 3 a.m., Dec. 18, 2019, the same day a panel ruled that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services/AP Photo

Simon F. Haeder, Pennsylvania State University

The Affordable Care Act remains on life support after a panel of federal judges ruled on Dec. 18, 2019 that the law’s individual mandate requiring people to buy health insurance is unconstitutional.

The decision hobbles the law in ways that are hard to predict politically, particularly in the upcoming election year. It also raises questions for the 20 million people who gained coverage in the marketplaces and all Americans who gained protections through the ACA. Continue reading

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‘This Is Just Cruelty and Exclusion’: Amid Trump’s Attack on Poor, One Million Fewer Kids Receiving Medicaid and CHIP

“This is not people reaching self-sufficiency,” warned Rep. Pramila Jayapal.

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-22-2019

The Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to monitor who is benefiting from government assistance programs have had what critics say is their desired effect—pushing more than a million children off Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program in less than two years.

Between December 2017 and June 2019, according to the New York Times, about three percent of children enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP were dropped from the program. Continue reading

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As Trump Vows “A Lot of Cutting” After Midterms, Americans Urged to Protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid at the Voting Booth

With Trump’s support, the GOP “has spent the last two years doing everything they can to reach onto our pockets, steal our money, and give it to their pay masters on Wall Street.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-17-2018

Photo: Social Security Works/Facebook

Following the news this week that under President Donald Trump, the federal deficit exploded to $779 billion in the 2018 fiscal year, the president said Wednesday that he would demand a five percent budget cut from each of his cabinet secretaries.

Stressing that the administration would “continue with the tax cuts, because we have other tax cuts planned,” Trump suggested the deficit was the result of spending on various programs at the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and other government agencies. Continue reading

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Nation Warned That Trump’s “Horrifying” Medicaid Pick Hired With “Express Purpose to Dismember” Program

Mary Mayhew “destroyed Medicaid in Maine now she will destroy it in the whole country.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-15-2018

Maine’s former Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew has been tapped to run Medicaid on a national level. Photo: WFVX

Provoking immediate warnings about what is now in store for the most vulnerable people in the United States, President Donald Trump on Monday reportedly tapped Maine’s former health commissioner Mary Mayhew—who was instrumental in Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s efforts to block Medicaid expansion in the state—to run the program at the federal level.

Critics such as Zak Ringelstein, a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Maine, rapidly denounced her appointment as “horrifying.” Continue reading

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