01-24-2014, 11:12 AM
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It's 42
Industry Role:
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Global
Posts: 18,083
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Quote:
[A]fter the calamitous debut of Healthcare.gov, Obamacare enrollment is now rising steadily, offering much-needed good news about a program that has been bombarded with criticism. The bad news: There?s still a serious flaw in the Affordable Care Act that will require more than a few lines of code to fix.
Immigrants?including 11.7 million undocumented people?are either explicitly barred from accessing federal benefits or face significant restrictions on Medicaid and other programs for the poor. Excluding immigrants was a key concession offered to moderate Democrats and conservatives, who insisted that no tax dollars go toward the undocumented. But keeping immigrants out of the ACA means that states and cities with large immigrant populations are likely face a huge strain on their budgets in the coming years.
It gets worse: The law also trims $22 billion from Medicaid charity-care reimbursements. Those cuts were approved with the reasoning that when most Americans were required to have insurance, hospitals would be stuck footing fewer bills for the uninsured. That?s generally true, but the logic falls apart in immigrant hubs such as New York, where nearly 70 percent of uninsured patients in the city?s public hospitals and clinics are also undocumented.
?They are basically left with the same options as before, which are no options, ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...e-bill/282444/
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Not really ... |
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