Initially, the story seemed to be about a man who railed against Obamacare while both taking absolutely no responsibility for failing to take advantage of the benefits of the law which he was entitled to and simultaneously blaming President Obama for the failure of his own GOP-controlled state to expand Medicaid under the law. Several people wrote up articles ripping Mr. Lang to shreds over his seeming hypocrisy, myself included.
In addition to all of the other horrific details which are oozing out of the House Republican's "Basement Bill" to replace the ACA, something else has been nagging at me for a few days now, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it until today.
The issue was sort of coalescing in my brain all afternoon, but it was a couple of other folks who laid it out first:
If you widen the age rating bands for health insurance and then scale the tax credit based on age, haven't you kind of done nothing?
Obviously there's no way of being 100% certain about this because the GOP still hasn't actually presented their ACA replacement bill (and in fact, have been playing a rousing game of Where's Waldo with it all afternoon), but we do have a pretty good idea of what it's gonna look like, thanks to a recent draft version of the bill which was leaked a couple of weeks back.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has crunched the numbers and compared what things look like financial assistance-wise under the ACA, the HHS Secretary Tom Price's "Empowering Patients First" bill and the recent "House Discussion Draft" bill to see how the GOP versions size up...and it's not pretty.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
--― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
While this project has received high praise as a useful resource, one problem with it is that the numbers aren't static--between the high churn rate of the individual market and Medicaid, as well as the fact there's no limited enrollment period for Medicaid (you can sign up year-round), the enrollment figures are constantly changing.
I don't have a county-level breakout of the updated number, but I'm assuming that each county/congressional district has increased roughly proportionately:
While this project has received high praise as a useful resource, one problem with it is that the numbers aren't static--between the high churn rate of the individual market and Medicaid, as well as the fact there's no limited enrollment period for Medicaid (you can sign up year-round), the enrollment figures are constantly changing.
While this project has received high praise as a useful resource, one problem with it is that the numbers aren't static--between the high churn rate of the individual market and Medicaid, as well as the fact there's no limited enrollment period for Medicaid (you can sign up year-round), the enrollment figures are constantly changing.
Case in point: As of the beginning of January, roughly 640,000 Michiganders were enrolled in "Healthy Michigan", our name for ACA Medicaid expansion. By the end of January, that number had increased to just over 646,000.
For the most part, Republican Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has taken a fairly hands-off approach when it comes to both the Affordable Care Act and Donald Trump. He pushed for both Medicaid expansion and a state-based ACA exchange, but while he managed to get the former through the GOP-controlled state legislature (albeit 3 months late and with a few conservative trimmings), he failed on the latter front, and pretty much shrugged it off after that. Since then, Michigan's implementation of ACA Medicaid expansion has quietly been pretty damned successful, with 646,000 Michiganders (strike that...it's now up to 666,000!) enrolled in the program...over 6.5% of the entire state's population. Beyond that, however, Snyder has been fairly quiet about the ACA overall to my knowledge.
