States Who Embraced the ACA are Having more Success

Starving the Beast and HealthCare Reform

Although it won’t come as a surprise to many, it is worth noting:

States who embraced the ACA’s main coverage provisions (especially Medicaid expansion) are having more success.

This is to say, the states that rejected Medicaid expansion for their poorest (19 or the 20 states who rejected Medicaid expansion are “red states”, the other is Maine) and those states that erected barriers to enrollment and refused to move health plans into the Obamacare marketplaces (again, mostly red states)… are now faced with poorer, sicker customers than they otherwise might have had… and this is driving up the price of coverage in their regions.

This downward spiral could have been prevented, but some argue that it was no accident.

Rather, some are of the opinion that the rejection of key aspects of the ACA is just part of a tactic called starving the beast (in this metaphor the ACA is the beast and the Republican party are the one’s stabbing it with their Steely knives by “breaking” and “defunding” key provisions). Ideology aside, the worst of all the effects is “the Medicaid Gap” in which millions of our nations poorest are stuck.

Eight of the nine states where consumer choices will be most limited in 2017 have rejected Medicaid expansion and taken other steps that have weakened their marketplaces, data show. These include Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee, all of which will have only one insurer in most counties next year, according to the Kaiser analysis. See the study: Analysis of 2017 Premium Changes and Insurer Participation in the Affordable Care Act’s Health Insurance Marketplaces. See an article on the study: The states with the biggest Obamacare struggles spent years undermining the law.

TIP: With the above said, some very pro-ACA states are also struggling and data is still somewhat anecdotal at this point (as open enrollment 2017 hasn’t happened yet). This is to say, while the data hints that rejecting the program doesn’t help, it doesn’t paint a simple picture (rather it strongly hints at a complex one that can’t by any stretch be a sole fault of the GOP).

All the above said, the story is nothing new (see 2014’s Gallup: Obamacare working better in states that embraced the law, or 2014’s Five states with ObamaCare success, or 2015’s Two Red States That Embraced Obamacare Have Seen Their Uninsured Rates Plummet Faster Than Anywhere), but its good to retell at regular intervals, less the GOP trick their poorest into being against the ACA due to their health struggles (as some claim IS the intention).