Tuesday 1 February 2023

Expansion of the Fascist Republican Christian Nationalist State

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ron-desantis-medicaid-florida-uninsured_n_63d37fbde4b04d4d18e52a03?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003

• 12% of the population of Florida (2.6 million people) has no insurance.  That’s well above the national average.  It’s also more than all but four other states.
• Huff Post: “Floridians without insurance suffer because when they can’t pay for their medical care, they end up in debt or go without needed treatment or both. The state suffers, too, because it ends up with a sicker, less productive workforce as well as a higher charity care load for its hospitals, clinics and other pieces of the medical safety net.”
• “The simple, straightforward reason so many Floridians have no health insurance is that its elected officials won’t sign on to the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, which offers states extra federal matching funds if they make the program available to everybody with incomes below or just above the poverty line.”
• Childless adults can’t even get Medicaid in Florida unless they have a disability.
• The income guidelines are so low (about 30% of the poverty line).  The Affordable Care Act would widen that income category.
• The non-expansion states all have Repubican governors or legislatures or both.
• When a House member, DeSantis opposed one bill AGAINST the ACA because it didn’t go far enough in dismantling protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
• If DeSantis accepted federal aid in the form of Medicaid expansion, several hundred thousand people could become eligible for insurance.
• Florida is likely to cause 1.75 MILLION people to lose insurance coverage.
• A disproportionate number of those on Medicaid in Florida are children.
• Many people will lose coverage because they are unaware of the changes in state law about eligibility.  Others will lose coverage because they are unable to make their way through cumbersome process and paperwork.
• The refusal to take the federal assistance for Medicaid is causing rural hospitals to close.
• “…in Tallahassee, where Republicans have had nearly uninterrupted control of the Florida’s lawmaking process since 1999.”
• DeSantis’ position about providing access to health care for poor people “…as fundamentally incompatible with American principles of freedom and private property.”
• The process for people to get approval for the ACA through a ballot initiative has become more cumbersome (surprise, surprise)