After Supreme Court ruling, Medicaid expansion faces uncertainty

A main goal of the Affordable Care Act was to increase the rolls of insured Americans, with about HALF coming from Medicaid. But the Supreme Court made it easier for states to opt out of the expanded program.

The president won a major enlargement of Medicaid funding as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. As many as 17 million people, or about one-third of Americans who lack health insurance, stood to gain coverage under the law.

But many states, which administer the Medicaid program and help to fund it alongside the federal government, joined a legal challenge to the act. Some 26 states argued that this portion of the law was an unlawful federal intrusion into their affairs.

Participation in Medicaid has always been at the discretion of states. In Thursday's ruling, a majority of justices indicated that the federal government could not force states to accept the law's expansion of the program, saying the threat that states refusing to participate in the expansion would lose all federal Medicaid funding was unconstitutionally coercive.

The result, potentially, could be to undercut Mr. Obama's major goal of expanding health insurance to more Americans.

AS MANY AS HALF OF PEOPLE GAINING COVERAGE WERE EXPECTED TO DO SO WITHING MEDICAID.

The law will still call for a big increase in federal spending on Medicaid, as much as $930 BILLION during the next decade to insure Americans whose income is 1.33 times the official poverty level or lower. But how many new people are enrolled under this plan will depend on whether states opt in.

I think you are correct. This seems to be being overlooked.

So I wonder what happens if most states refuse to expand their Medicaid programs? Where will the people that were supposed to be covered go?

Or will King O punish those states that don’t comply by some official dercee?

Medicaid currently covers more than 60 million Americans, including a quarter of the nation's children, according to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation. But because of complex eligibility rules, many low income individuals remain uninsured.

60 million currently covered by Medicaid, including 1/4 of the nation's children. And Obamacare would add another 20 million plus, bringing the total on Medicaid to 80 million plus, more than 1/4 of our population and approaching 1/3 of the nation's children.

Whatever they call the program, this is insane. We now spend more than 1 trillion dollars per year on support of primarily working aged Americans and their dependents, and that doesn't even begin to consider all the problems with retirement plans at all levels.

When will it all collapse of its own weight?

Soon.
It will collapse very soon.
I don't make a lot of money, but at 40K a year, I don't consider myself “poor”.
The Feds openly take slightly over 10% of my hourly wages.
They take a similar amount from my employer for employing me.
So 20% of my “wages” are taken via taxes before I can deposit my paycheck.
My employer has a health care insurance policy, of which they pay half.
My portion works out to be 10% of my wage, they pay another 10%.
That's a total of 40% of my “wages” accounted for, and I haven't even seen a doctor yet.
My state does not confiscate my income via a direct tax, but it does charge a sales tax of 7%.
Since I own a car, I pay an additional 3% for mandatory auto insurance, license,tags and registration fees.
That's 50%.
I still haven't seen a doctor yet.
My housing rent and basic electric, water and garbage utilities consume 30% of my after tax income.
I fritter away the remaining 20% on food, gas, clothing, OTC medicines and miscellaneous “entertainment expenses” like phone and internet access.

If I cut out cable TV, phone and internet access, I could afford to see a doctor!

My goodness, I am dragging down society with my wastefull spending!

Yes. Any able bodied person should be responsible for themselves
and their family.

The only people that I put in a class is people who don’t have the mental
capacity (retarded), schizophrenics, etc.

I remember a TV show about a disabled autistic young man who was over 21.
They were desperate to get called off the waiting list for “social services.” So that they could get money and/or housing assistance.

I was like....what for? You are a middle class family with a house.
Your son works a job. He earns income.

The way they were talking it was like they were in the middle of Bangladesh
and their son had unexplained problems
Now that’s a real problem. That’s left holding the proverbial bag.

Someone sold someone a big white pony.
That your life doesn’t need to be hard. Doesn’t need to sacrifice
and do the right thing.
In the long run, without the govt. assistance, I think everyone would be
proud.

Yes, the benefits given to adults of working age who mostly don’t work now total more than 1 trillion per year. And we know there has been a large increase since Obama took office.

One of the real insanities of the past few decades is that our government has added to the benefits until they are worth $30,000 per year or more (with no income tax, of course) for a single mother with a kid or two, much more than most single mothers could make working. Swiping that EBT card.

Millions of adults who can have more by not working. Until that’s reversed, we have little hope of solving our fiscal problems.

As a single mom, and sole supporter, I know that.

In fact, I have been deemed “stupid” by former friends, mostly white and native born, for NOT committing welfare fraud.

I don't know who came up with the EBT card idea, and I don't much care. It must be stopped.

I really don't mind if a portion of my taxes are used to provide a safety net for the mentally and/or physically disabled USA citizens.
In fact, I would rather our Federal taxes go to them, than to bail out USA or foreign banks, fund the ACLU,UN etc, or go towards grants for “unicorn and rainbow based” alternative energy companies.

And I absolutely demand true means testing, proof of USA citizenship, and continued annual accountability (including fraud prosecutions) for government “benefit” recipients to receive hand outs.

Yeah, it sucks to work at menial, manual labor jobs that don't pay much.I know. I've done them.

What really sucks more, is hearing the media amplified whines of well paid politicians, welfare cheats/frauds and illegal aliens, claiming they can't do those particular jobs, and that this country “needs” imported illegal slaves to do them.
Meanwhile, the Feds are enslaving the lower,middle, and high income workers to pay for all the liars, cheaters and fraudsters.

And yes, the recently retired “baby boomers” are really going to suffer the hardest consequences, in their old age, of what they wrought.

And yes, the recently retired “baby boomers” are really going to suffer the hardest consequences, in their old age, of what they wrought.

I agree with you until your final statement. All these programs were actually put in place during the 1960s and the years soon after. The baby boomers were still in high school and college when most all these programs were begun.

The boomers weren't in control of much of anything until at least the 1980s, and Clinton was the first boomer president beginning in 1992. The boomers have only been in control of the government and other institutions since the late '80s or early '90s, long after the welfare state was firmly entrenched.

The welfare state is a gift from LBJ and the Greatest Generation, not the boomers.

The Greatest Generation was born 1901-1924.
The Silent Generation was born 1925 - 1945.
The Baby Boomers were born between 1946-1964.
They, the baby boomers started voting in 1964.
Oddly enough, That was the year LBJ, the father of most of those programs you alluded to, was elected President.

In January 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Great society program to Congress. He recommended passing of laws that would help education, Medicare, urban renewal, conservation, wide-scale fight against poverty, removal of hindrances to the right to vote, attack on disease, Medicaid, beautification, development of depressed regions, and control and prevention of crime, to which Congress responded by reenacting most of them into laws.
He also signed into law the Gun Control Act of 1968 which was the most far reaching and largest gun control federal laws in the history of the United States of America. He was also credited for signing into law the Medicare program which was established on July 30, 1965

I cast the greatest blame on the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers for the steady decline of the USA.
But what do I know?
(SARCASM) I just knew something of the people who actually lived throughout the last century, before it seemingly became acceptable to rewrite history.

The Greatest Generation held the presidency and Congress and controlled practically all institutions when the Great Society and War on Poverty programs were passed into law. And that happened from the mid-60s to the mid-70s. Nixon started many liberal programs like affirmative action and the EPA during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. And Carter was a member of the GG, as was Reagan and even GHWB, who would have been among the youngest of the GG.

And based on your date ranges, there were no Silent Generation presidents. Both GHWB and Carter were born in 1924, then we had the first Boomer president in Clinton.

And the GG would have been the majority on the Supreme Court during most of those years.

Sorry, but no baby boomers were voting in 1964 because the voting age was 21 at that time. And baby boomers had little power in any institutions until the mid ‘80s and later.

The voters had such a tendency to elect WWII veterans that that group controlled the institutions of the US for many years, and they are most responsible for the changes in laws, in education and all other institutions post WWII.

Try again.
18 year olds could vote in some states in 1964.
By 1972, they could vote in all states.

It really doesn't much matter when Carter was born, it matters who voted his sorry, worthless ass into the position of POTUS.
That was the Silent Generation(the parents of)and the Baby Boomers.

My soon to be 18 year old will vote in November this year.
None of the candidates are of “her generation”.
She has never had the chance to talk to any of her great-grandparents, but she has heard me talk about them for years.

You might be confused about who was who in recent history, but she is not.
I already told her that my debts are not hers, and she must vote for herself and her unborn childrens future, not her mothers.

You’re delusional. 18 year olds could not vote until 1971 with the passage of the 26th amendment.

And even if a few could vote in 1964, it is beyond ridiculous to attribute the social legislation of the 1960s to the boomers. You’re blaming a group of which 90%+ were still in high school and down into elementary school when the major legislation was passed. I guess you also blame them for starting the war in Vietnam and for the Watts riots?

Sorry, the GG controlled practically everything during those years and for ten to twenty more afterwards. The nation we have was fashioned by the GG. And the nation’s debts are primarily a result of the poverty programs started by the GG, which now cost a trillion dollars per year.

The GG planted the seeds that are destroying this nation fiscally, whether you can admit it or not.

And Carter was elected because of a backlash against Watergate and the long war in Vietnam, and because Ford was a poor candidate. Even the South voted for Carter, and he is the last Democrat to win most of the southern states. The voters did not know much about Carter, they just wanted a change.

http://presidentelect.org/e1976.html

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