Yep. You're screwing it up for pretty much everybody.
A refusal to accept Medicaid expansion funding under Obamacare, a
new study from the RAND Corp. finds, will probably result in higher health insurance premiums. At least that's the case for Texas.
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.
About 320,000 adult Texans just above the poverty line will take advantage of the Affordable Care Act’s federal subsidies and buy coverage in the individual insurance market, the researchers said. Those are people who would have been enrolled in Medicaid as the federal law was written and before that part of it was altered by a Supreme Court ruling.
The study said that because low-income people generally are not as healthy as wealthier people, their inclusion in private health insurance exchanges will increase costs. That will force a 9.3 percent increase in premiums for all 3 million Texans who will be enrolled in the individual market by 2016, the study said.
The subsidies for purchasing health insurance on the exchange are available to people with incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of the poverty level. The Medicaid expansion is available to people who make up to 138 percent of the poverty level. So there's a little bit of overlap in the programs, and that relatively small segment of would-be Medicaid eligibles who will also be able to purchase on the exchange. But it's a large enough segment to potentially hike premiums. The study authors, however, caution that this is just preliminary estimating, and:
Sweeping statements about the effects of the Affordable Care Act on premiums should be interpreted very carefully because the law has effects that will differ depending on individuals’ age and smoking status, the actuarial value of the chosen, individuals’ eligibility for federal tax credits, and state implementation decisions.
There's good news for Texas, too, though. The state currently has about 6 million uninsured residents, and that will fall just over 4.2 million, according to RAND's calculations. The uninsured population would have been halved to about 2.9 million with Medicaid expansion, the majority likely undocumented workers.