National political battles emphasized by the Affordable Care Act are squeezing Louisiana. On one side, the Tea Party and the Republicans refuse to implement the ACA, and on the other, the Obama administration promised that people could keep their existing health care plans, which turned out to be false.
Recently, The Advocate reported that as many as 93,000 residents in Louisiana will lose their health insurance plans which flies in the face of Obama’s promise. The president and the Democrats are already unpopular in Louisiana, with the state voting against Obama twice. The news of the canceled health insurance plans is going to make the state more polarized than it already is.
Gov. Bobby Jindal, who many suspect is trying to become president, has for the past several years been cutting education and health care. Jindal is popular outside of Louisiana and was considered a possible running mate for presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in 2012.
When Obama and the Democrat-led Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, it passed without a single Republican vote. Due to the passage, many conservative Democrats lost their seats to the insurgent Tea Party and the Republicans in 2010 midterm elections. Since then, Tea Party Republicans have been trying to repeal the ACA.
The finest hour of the Affordable Care Act was when the Supreme Court ruled in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius that the law was constitutional. The Supreme Court also ruled that states can opt out of the Medicaid expansion which our governor has already taken advantage of.
At the state level, Jindal has refused to implement the Medicaid expansion, which would help more than 400,000 people. He did something similar in 2009, when he refused the expansion of unemployment benefits from the Stimulus Package during the height of the recession.
The changes of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act would benefit hundreds of thousands if Jindal would just implement it. Some of the Medicaid changes include expanding the coverage to those who make 138 percent of the poverty line, allowing poor adults with no children or disabilities to qualify, and expanding funding for the program.
In February, Jindal made an argument that the expansion will cost too much but neglected to mention the federal government will cover 100 percent of the expansion and incrementally lower it to 90 percent by 2020. In May, the Republican-dominated Senate rejected an amendment that would have allowed for the voters to decide on the Medicaid expansion.
There has been some backlash by grassroots organizations to Jindal refusing the expansion. Around 44 nonprofits are pushing for a Medicaid expansion petition which they claim will drop the number of those who are uninsured by half and bring nearly $15.7 billion to the state over the next decade. If Jindal and the Republican-controlled Louisiana Congress don’t expand Medicaid, it will leave a large gap between those in poverty who qualify for pre-ACA Medicaid and those who are affluent enough to qualify for the subsidies in the health care exchange. The Medicaid expansion is supposed to cover everyone in between those groups, but the Republican Party is having none of it.
If there is one thing that is shown with this new law being implemented, it is that reform is difficult. This is the first major reform program in U.S. history that didn’t pass with bipartisan support, and now the nation is becoming more and more divided during its implementation.
The people of Louisiana and the nation need to push past this gridlock and partisanship and push for the future. Millions need health care, and if there is one thing that’s sure, the previous system wasn’t better. Louisiana must accept the Medicaid expansion so all those who need health care can get it.