Obamacare case to be argued before the Supreme Court this week 3/25

[cariad]

 

The Daily Kos linked this as well. I love the comments below, warning Canada that they are now going to be overrun with illegal immigrants, and Canadians chiming in with Um, do we get any say in this? We don't remember inviting you over.

[jbeany]

Oh, like the Canadians want us!

The decisions were just messy enough that everyone can keep on arguing whatever thing they swore was right in the first place.... *sigh*

[Bill Peckham]

Here is one nuance of the ruling that will need to be followed http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3796


A state would have little basis for refusing to implement the Medicaid expansion, other than for narrow ideological reasons.  The Affordable Care Act provides 100 percent federal funding for the expansion for its first three years, phasing down after that to 90 percent federal funding.  And the expansion, by greatly reducing the number of uninsured, will enable states and localities to save substantial sums on uncompensated care for the uninsured.  (A new Center blog post examines this issue in more detail.)

But in any state that does refuse to implement the expansion, a shocking inequity will arise.  People with incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line will be eligible for subsidies to help them afford coverage in the new health insurance exchanges.  But people below the poverty line will not be eligible, because the Affordable Care Act assumes they’ll be in Medicaid instead.

In the typical (or median) state today, a working-poor parent loses eligibility for Medicaid when his or her income reaches 63 percent of the poverty line; an unemployed parent loses eligibility at just 37 percent of the poverty line.  In states that refuse to implement the Medicaid expansion, people with incomes between levels such as these and the poverty line will be ineligible for both Medicaid and subsidies to purchase coverage in the exchanges; their incomes will be too high for the former and too low for the latter.  It will be up to state policymakers to avert such a deeply inequitable outcome by moving forward with the Medicaid expansion.



There were a number of states that turned down stimulus funding for job/construction programs. Will Wisconsin turn down the Medicaid expansion? FL? I think some states might. LA for one.

[Bill Peckham]

I think it will be years before people get used to all of this and we start to move on, move forward.

Mitt Romney has said he will repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act if he's elected. Perhaps that will be the undoing of his candidacy, but more likely it will polarize people around this issue.

Oh, and CNN pulled a Dewey Defeats Truman Screen capture: http://yfrog.com/z/obzehpp

ha  http://yfrog.com/z/hw7ozrfj

[jbeany]

Obamacare is now like the lotto - a tax on stupid people!   

[cariad]

Love the Obama-Truman photo, with a tablet no less!