The projections from the health consulting firm Avalere come as states undertake a sweeping reevaluation of the 94 million people enrolled in Medicaid, government’s health insurance for the neediest Americans. A host of problems have surfaced across the country, including hourslong phone wait times in Florida, confusing government forms in Arkansas, and children wrongly dropped from coverage in Texas.
“Those people were destined to fail,” said Trevor Hawkins, an attorney for Legal Aid of Arkansas.
Hawkins helped hundreds of people navigate their Medicaid eligibility in Arkansas, as state officials worked to “swiftly disenroll” about 420,000 people in six months’ time. He raised problems with Arkansas’ process — like forms that wrongly told people they needed to reapply for Medicaid, instead of simply renew it — with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
If we had proper socialized medicine in this country, we wouldn’t need Medicaid.
We do have socialized medicine for some people—it’s called Medicaid. What we’re seeing isn’t a flaw of Medicaid, but a deliberate (and successful effort) to dismantle it made possible the degree to which Republicans control the state and federal governments. I’m not sure why you’re talking about expanding the very thing we’re politically unable to sustain as if it’s a way to sidestep the problem.
So we have inadequate socialized medicine in this country.
The arguments are pretty spot on (with plenty of exceptions, e.g. efforts to privatize healthcare in each country; but we’re generalizing here), not so much the conclusion:
not sure why you’re talking about expanding the very thing we’re politically unable to sustain as if it’s a way to sidestep the problem.
Unsustainable: US healthcare for profit. Evidence: Most expensive healthcare in the world with average or worse results.
Sustainable: Universal healthcare for everyone. Evidence: Every other country in North America, Europe, Australia, parts of Africa and South America.
I meant “sustain” in a political sense. We’re not going to be able to expand a system that Republicans are successfully destroying, nor are we going to be able to enact something better. Things are just gonna keep getting worse in red states until they’ve had enough (which may be never). The best we can do at the federal level right now is to prevent Republicans from sabotaging blue states.
Medicaid programs are mostly controlled by the individual states and not the federal government. Here they are blaming Biden when it is the state governors that are causing the problem. No doubt if Biden did something, they would have just written an article blaming him for federal overreach.
Exactly.
Texas sued to not receive federal Medicaid funds (to which our taxes contribute).
They want healthcare to be an employment benefit so that people are chained to their underpaying jobs. They want to replace government programs with charities so that religious leaders can decide who gets assistance.
My friend has a young daughter with a genetic disorder who was kicked off of Medicaid due to an “error” as described in the article. It’s a full-time job to navigate the byzantine bureaucracy and get the kid reinstated.
These assholes are playing games with people’s lives so that they can control them with their cruel Machiavellian plotting.
Once again, the “liberal” news shows its conservative bias. Gotta make shit up so they don’t LOOK biased.
In states that don’t give a shit about people? What a surprise.
Medicaid. Florida, Arkansas, Texas. Why would the Biden administration do this?
This is one of those weird stories where Republicans have caused gigantic clusterfucks on purpose and yet it’s somehow Joe Biden that’s to blame.
That’s literally their MO. Fuck everything up while the Democrats are in power, blame them for all of it and promise it’ll be “better” under a Republifacist government.
They did it to Obama, they did it to Clinton and they’ve done it to every other Dem president for the last 30-40 years
They’ve been doing it for decades. Fuck up the government programs they don’t like, then point to the program failing to justify cutting it completely and hanging those who relied on it out to dry.
Never mind blaming Biden, who doesn’t control the federal budget. Why is Biden’s name even out there. Critics should be pointing to the Republican house and demanding action.
This is even dumber really – the ultimate fault here lies with the Republican-controlled states for purposely making it an awful process so they can cut people off the programs and for not expanding it under the ACA to cover more people.
Edit: to be clear I meant the situation is dumber than what you paid out, not that you were dumb or anything of the sort. Apologies.
So it’s the republicans fault as always and for some reason it’s presented as it’s biden’s fault for not reacting quickly? Good job “journalist”
This is a ridiculous headline. It’s a state administered program! You have states like New York that make a huge effort at getting people enrolled and covering as many as possible. And you have red states with bizarre lottery systems and many states that still haven’t expanded Medicaid and taken tons of extra funding that is available for them right now if they want to cover more people. The Biden admin has very little leverage with these states. The Supreme Court long ago made it very clear this is all up to the states. I don’t see what on earth this article wants the federal government to do about this. Withhold even more Medicaid funding from those states? They’d probably be delighted. And I doubt that’d be legal.
Hate how nothing is the fault of Republicans in the media these days. Every story is just, Democrats should have done more to stop Republicans somehow, so everything wrong is actually the Democrats fault. Like, maybe the Republicans knee capping Medicaid in every state they control and on the federal level trying to limit health care access and holding the government and the nation’s credit hostage to get even more cuts to healthcare are the ones at fault here. Just maybe?
Republicans:
