Interesting story about how ejecting a half million people from Medicaid in Arkansas, and placing them on “unlimited price gouging, for-profit private insurance”, is causing more women to get abortions.
{{ This ensured that people had health insurance while reducing churn. Churn — when recipients cycle in and out of the program because of administrative hassles — costs as much as $773 per person in today’s dollars. This represents “a significant share of Medicaid expenses,” according to one study. }}
Remember, it costs the Gov’t more in tax subsidies to put a low-income person on Obamacare because of the 20% skim rate to private insurers, and higher reimbursements paid to doctors and hospitals, than to just leave poor people on Medicaid. Plus, Medicaid is better health coverage. The higher deductibles and co-pays of private insurance are an impediment to care, so much so that even a woman who wants a baby has to think twice about the financial risk of birthing a child with any kind of medical complications under the unlimited price gouging system.
So why would we be spending extra tax dollars to give people crappier health care? A certain segment of the population thinks it’s worth it, as long as blacks and Hispanics suffer even more.
intercst
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I think the comment by the Gov. Huckabee Sanders speaks volumes:
"Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s words, “government dependency.”
This is deeply held conviction by conservative Christians. There’s not just a great distrust of government, but a strict tenet that government programs should be stripped away. I spoke with a family member who is conservative Christian. She told me that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with Medicare. Her husband recently enrolled. She said, “I would do anything to prevent the government from making me take Medicare.” I explained to her a couple times that enrolling in Medicare is a choice. No one has to accept Medicare.
This perspective is pervasive. People that hold a strong conservative Christian faith believe that when government programs are presented as solutions to unemployment vs. breadlines, or elder care vs. neglect, or social security vs poverty, they complain “government dependency.” These are government solutions. President Johnson fought to enact Medicare because of conditions he saw in the South. The first unemployment insurance program in the U.S. was created in Wisconsin in 1932 because of poverty created by the great recession. This was a solution to breadlines. This point of view is a conundrum to me.
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