If you are shot by a gun but don’t have health insurance, a hospital will treat you. If you have a brain aneurism but don’t have health insurance, a hospital will treat you. If you have a serious mental illness but don’t have health insurance, a hospital can turn you away.
In 2014, 18,400 mentally ill Louisianians went without treatment, according to a report by the American Mental Health Counselors Association.
Gov. Bobby Jindal and state legislators trapped them within a health care coverage gap when they refused the program’s expansion. These mentally ill men and women’s incomes were too high for both the qualifications for Medicaid and the tax credits connected to insurance plans from the Affordable Care Act, but too low to afford quality private healthcare plans.
The federal government offered to pay 100 percent of the cost during the first year of Medicaid expansion, eventually reducing the subsidy to 90 percent by 2020. Jindal claimed he refused the Medicaid expansion on the precedent that Louisiana would not be able to afford the additional costs when the government stopped financing the expansion.
I could buy that argument if Jindal was still governor in 2020, bankrupting the state even further. However, voters will elect someone new in fall 2016, and hopefully by 2020 Louisiana will have enough money to pay for 10 percent of the yearly costs of the Medicaid expansion.
It is more likely Bobby Jindal refused the expansion on the precedent that the money came from ObamaCare.
Twenty-four other states opted out of the Medicaid expansion. Within the states that opted out, nearly 570,000 citizens suffered a serious mental health disorder and were not covered. Within the 26 other states, over 350,000 citizens were covered.
I could respect these states’ decisions to opt out of the Medicaid expansion if they offered an alternative to treat those uncovered by health insurance.
I could even accept Bobby Jindal’s decision to opt-out of the expansion if he would have provided an alternative source of funding for treating those 18,400 citizens we have left in the dark.
The problem is there were no alternatives offered. Instead, we reverted to 19th century liberalism — every man for himself.
Under Jindal’s administration, the state’s mental health hospitals have dwindled to near non-existence. The New Orleans Adolescent Hospital closed in 2009, Greenwell Springs Hospital closed in 2012, along with Southeast Louisiana Hospital and both the Eastern Louisiana Mental Hospital and the Central Louisiana State Hospital received substantial cuts.
Jindal is playing a political game of chess.
Mental health care is one of his sacrificial pawns, standing side-by-side with education, religious freedom and the general well-being of Louisiana citizens.
Unfortunately, Bobby sucks at chess.
According to the American Mental Health Counselors Association’s report, had Louisiana opted into the Medicaid expansion, out of the 18,400 untreated Louisianians, 59 percent were in serious psychological distress, 26 percent suffered severe mental illnesses and 15 percent had a substance use disorder.
These are the pawns thrown around on the political battlefield, all in the name of a seat in the Oval Office. A seat Bobby Jindal will never sit in.
Justin DiCharia is a 21-year-old mass communication junior from Slidell, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @JDiCharia.