Bevin’s proposed changes have been controversial among most health advocates and individuals, who have criticized them in written comments and at three public hearings as unnecessary, overly complicated and likely to create barriers to health care for those who rely on Medicaid.
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At the same time, the experience in those states suggests better access will ultimately improve patients’ health, as patients get more regular checkups and seek care for chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.
In its 2012 ruling, the Supreme Court allowed states to exercise option over Medicaid expansion.
The researchers surveyed approximately 9,000 low-income adults in Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas from late 2013 to the end of 2015.
The study’s conclusions could help bolster the budding movement for expansion in Georgia.
Increased access to a personal physician.
Each of the states had taken a different approach under Obamacare.
“It appears that Medicaid expansion is a fiscal win for states”, Kathy Hempstead, a senior adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in a statement.
“From the patient’s perspective there doesn’t seem to be a big difference”, Sommers said.
It doesn’t count the economic impact of the extra spending, which will generate economic opportunity and jobs, largely in health care, Custer said. The sad thing is that in states that have not expanded, you see that same hunger for coverage.
“Thus far, expansion states have found that state cost increases resulting from higher caseloads are outweighed by state cost savings and revenue growth that result from expansion”, the report says.
The two states projected to see net budget losses were New Mexico beginning in state fiscal year 2020-2021, and Alaska beginning in federal fiscal year 2017.
“We accept new patients but it’s challenging to get new patients access to care”, he said. The same would hold true for the states yet to expand Medicaid eligibility.
That impact would be felt at the hospital level as well. Among its findings are that the remaining uninsured adults in Kentucky as of March 2016 were 397 percent more likely to be of Hispanic or Latino heritage and 100 percent more likely to be between the ages of 19 and 25. Georgia, over that same period of time, had an 8 percent increase of uninsured admissions.
After just two years of expanded coverage, patients in expansion states are going to the doctor more frequently and having less trouble paying for it. In Arkansas, the uninsured rate plummeted from 42 percent to 14 percent and from 40 percent to 9 percent in Kentucky.
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Last week, a Bevin administration spokeswoman told The Courier-Journal: “There has not been a historic drop in uninsured – this is misleading” and that “Medicaid is not health insurance – it is a benefit program like SNAP (food stamps) or TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families)”. Other estimates, including that of the Georgia Chamber, are higher. The Laurel Grocery Co., a wholesaler operating in nine states, is saving money and increasing productivity not, as Bevin proposes, by making its 250 employees pay more, but by making primary care more accessible.
