As Donald Trump and the Republican Congress work to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, states controlled by Democrats have worked to keep uninsured rates from rising, while Republican state lawmakers have done no such thing. That’s had predictable results, Alice Ollstein reports:
A new report from National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released this week found that while the overall uninsured rate held relatively steady over the course of 2017 the gap between (largely Democratic-controlled) states that expanded Medicaid and the (largely Republican) states that have yet to do so is the widest it has been since the implementation of the ACA. By the end of the Trump administration’s first year in power, the uninsured rate in non-expansion states was more than twice the rate in states that accepted federal funding to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.
Another report shows that the uninsured rate among Republicans rose by six points between 2016 and the first quarter of 2018, while Democrats held steady. Some of this, of course, may be Republicans casting off the shackles of Obamacare and proudly deciding to risk medical bankruptcy if one in their lives goes wrong. But it’s unlikely that that explains the entire difference.
And this is all before Republican-controlled states start implementing racist work requirements for Medicaid.