Medicaid on the march? USA Today has a very interesting
story about Medicaid. How it has expanded. How working families benefit. How it is a better deal than private insurance in some instances (e.g. Wal*Mart).
The welfare reform that threw people off of cash assistance (in one Ohio county from 427 to 3 over eight years) was coupled with an expansion of medicaid (from 4,020 to 7,316, same county, same time frame) with almost all the growth to working families that were paid low wages.
How did this happen? We don't recall the policy debates at the time. Will it continue? The outlook is unclear, what with Congress looking to cut Medicaid. Is Medicaid coverage for the working poor the first step in a national health care program? Who knows?
posted by Quiddity at 8/04/2005 01:06:00 PM
There are stories that indicate the opposite thing is happening, a while back Thomas Levitt posted a story on Seeing The Forest about a mother of three being denied coverage because her $352.00 monthly income was too high.
Missouri recently sent 300,000 letters to people telling them their medicaid was being cut. We know this in Montana because there was a typo on the 800 number and some very upset people have been calling a woman in Columbia Falls, Mt.
Medicaid is a great form of health insurance for many individuals and there is no way it should be cut off as health coverage is a major importance to many.
