No doubt the sad victims of Republican controlled-states will blame the President for the raise in their rates. But actually, Republicans are about to raise rates by 8-10% on their constituents by rejecting a key part of ObamaCare.
The Dallas Morning News (subscriber only link) reported, “Study Says Texas Premiums Will Rise With Medicaid Expansion Opposition”:
Texas’ refusal to expand Medicaid will cause private health insurance premiums to rise by an average of 9.3 percent for people who buy their own coverage, a new study finds. GOP lawmakers, strongly encouraged by Gov. Rick Perry, decided not to add poor adults to Medicaid’s rolls. That means about 1.3 million fewer Texans will have health coverage by 2016 than if the federal Affordable Care Act were fully implemented in the state, according to the study by the nonprofit research organization Rand Corp.
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It’s not just Texas. The RAND Health study focused on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on health insurance enrollment and premiums in Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas and the nation overall, and they found that premiums increase by 8 to 10% if states fail to expand Medicaid.
This is what opposition to ObamaCare gets you. ObamaCare lowers the deficit, too, so there is no reason to oppose this market based healthcare reform law, but that isn’t stopping Republicans like Rick Perry who is costing Texans an average of 9.3% raise in their rates.
The study also determined that all ten states could expect a large decline in uninsurance due to ObamaCare, especially if they expand Medicaid. “In many states, the uninsurance rate will be reduced to levels between 6 and 8 percent with the Affordable Care Act, compared to levels in the range of 15 to 20 percent without the law.” Of course, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for ObamaCare, so states with a high number of undocumented immigrants will still have high rates of uninsured.
Republicans have been obstructing the implementation of ObamaCare in order to offer citizens GOPNoCare. The CBO determined that GOPNoCare (repealing ACA) “will increase the federal budget deficit by more than $100 billion in the first decade and more than a trillion dollars in the next decade.”
A separate Health Affairs study found that states that rejected Medicaid expansion would lose $8.4 billion in federal money, and state spending could increase by $1 billion in 2016.
As usual, it’s the poor in rural areas of red states who will be the most harmed by the Republican Party, and yet will also vote most reliably for the Republican Party. They will blame Obama for the rise in their rates and the rest of us will try not to scream in frustration.
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The study is a copyrighted 2013 RAND Health study. The RAND Corporation describes itself as “a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis.”
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