As some governors say they’ll back off federal plans to expand Medicaid — and with Maine’s governor planning to cut current rolls — advocates for children’s health warn of a rollback in the progress made in insuring poor children.
Research shows that children’s ability to learn is tied to their health, so a drop in the number of children with health insurance could affect some students’ performance at school.
But the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act says states cannot be threatened with a loss of existing Medicaid dollars for refusing to expand the health-care program for the poor. Some Republican governors have said they will not expand the program in their states.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center for Children and Families outline in a recent memo the potential effects if Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, and other states decline to expand Medicaid — an expansion in which the federal government would pick up all or nearly all of the tab for years.
The expansion would allow many low-income families not eligible for Medicaid to qualify. But they wouldn’t be able to get help buying insurance through the health-care exchanges to be formed under the 2010 law, so without an expansion, they would likely continue to lack access to coverage.
While the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program has helped increase the number of poor children with health insurance, coverage for their parents is also critical, the groups say. (A June Government Accountability Office report notes that about three-quarters of the 7 million children uninsured before the law passed would become eligible for Medicaid, CHIP, or other paths to coverage.)
The groups say low-income families are three times more likely to have children eligible for insurance but without coverage than are families in which parents are covered by private insurance or Medicaid. Previous Medicaid expansions for parents have led to significant increases in the enrollment of eligible children and decreases in uninsured children.
(c)2012 Education Week (Bethesda, Md.)
Distributed by MCT Information Services
Rally call of the left “It’s for the children, It’s for the children”.
Yup. If Pavlov had persisted, he’s have discovered that after a while, when he rang the bell the dogs just yawned.
Like we do for your redundant preachings?
Oh, bitter, bitter. But not, we may safely presume, clinging.
Not a bad rally call since kids tend to be ignored or neglected by conservatives (I refuse to use “right” in this case).
This healthcare argument got tossed out the window yesterday when Mr. Romney’s spokesperson noted that if folks were living in Massachusetts under Gov. Romney’s (Romneycare) they wouldn’t have had to make the choice to go without care or suffer healthcare bankruptcy. Obamacare is fundamentally Romneycare.
Having Romney constantly run away from the one thing he ever did that actually helped other “Americans” (We know how he’s helped out a lot of Chinese) just goes to show you what a toadie he is for the 1% supporting his campaign who have no need to care for anyone but themselves and who actually profit greatly (through medical/insurance related investments) on the healthcare woes of every single American.
You can lump most big companies, even those run by liberals (GE & Jeffrey Imelt sound familiar?) into the outsourcing category.
Certainly, but I won’t be voting for any of them for president either. Tell me, how many millions did President Obama personally pocket from U.S. outsourcing? I’m thinking ZERO dollars. Now as for Mr. Romney we know that’s a different story. The only question is how many millions? Which we’d know more about if we could only get a hold of those darn tax returns of his. What’s that man tryin to hide?
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We have planned parenthood to do that.
If [the poor] would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. (Scrooge).
Here’s another good one: (Proverbs 22:16) He who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and he who gives gifts to the rich–both come to poverty.