Surprise! 1/4 to lose health insurance

[WendyBG]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/opinion/covid-medicaid-lo…

**The End of the Covid Emergency Could Mean a Huge Loss of Health Insurance**
**By Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, The New York Times, April 4, 2022**

**...**
**When the federal Covid-19 public health emergency ends — as it is currently scheduled to on April 15, though it is likely to be extended — so will many of its associated insurance protections. That includes a rule that forbade states to kick anyone off Medicaid while Covid-19 was raging, which came along with a 6.2 percentage point boost in federal Medicaid funding to keep these most vulnerable patients insured.... Medicaid enrollment has grown by 12 percent since the beginning of the pandemic; as many as one in four Americans are now insured by the program....**

**Millions of people could be dropped since states will be required to once again review enrollees’ continued eligibility, as many as 15 million over time by some estimates. That includes people whose income has risen, those who moved to another state or people who simply haven’t returned the complicated paperwork to demonstrate their continued eligibility....**

**Many of the millions of people who lose Medicaid coverage, either because they no longer qualify or because they are otherwise dropped from the state’s rolls, sometimes mistakenly, are likely to discover they are uninsured only when they next seek medical care, such as when they visit a clinic or go to a pharmacy to refill a prescription....** [end quote]

This could be catastrophic for many families.

If a family thinks that it’s covered by Medicaid, it won’t buy health insurance (e.g. using the ACA). They could go for medical care and be blindsided with no insurance at all.

Also, the government program that pays for Covid shots, tests and care is running out of money. The government enhanced subsidies for the ACA due to Covid will expire at the end of 2022.

Although great progress has been made with vaccinations, there are still millions who haven’t been vaccinated, especially in the South. The cost of Covid treatment is high.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine…

Anyone on Medicaid needs to quickly decide on a course of action if they might lose their coverage. Many probably won’t do this (may not even know about it) and could end up in a world of hurt.
Wendy

[intercst]

What did you expect? You need to be an upper income earner to able to afford the extra $8,000/year “poll tax” added to our health care costs by price gouging and political corruption.

American families pay $8,000 ‘poll tax’ to cover health care costs, economists argue
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/american-families-poll-tax…

American families are essentially paying an $8,000 tax to cover the skyrocketing cost of health care in the country, according to two top economists.

Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton argued during the American Economic Association’s annual meeting in San Diego that a slice of the U.S. population is getting rich at the expense of the rest of the population, The Washington Post reported.

The U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world, and its cost far surpasses that of other high-income nations, according to a 2019 report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. America spends about $1 trillion more than Switzerland, the second-most expensive system — meaning U.S. households spend roughly $8,000 more than their Swiss counterparts.

Case and Deaton called the additional $8,000 that families pay a “poll tax.” The idea behind a poll tax is that it falls on every head, regardless of their ability to pay.

Price gouging in health care is a major macroeconomic threat to the health of the nation. Wait until the health care “job creators” try to monetize the next COVID wave by sending us back to the emergency room for a $3,000 COVID test – deductibles and co-pays apply.

intercst