Americans Discover They're Trapped In GOP's Medicaid Expansion Gap

[DonViejo]

DYLAN SCOTT – DECEMBER 9, 2013, 6:00 AM EST

With HealthCare.gov working better and the first deadline to sign up for health coverage that starts in January approaching, Obamacare's so-called navigators -- the people and organizations receiving federal funds to help people enroll -- are seeing more and people come through the doors and out to their events.

Navigators are community organizations, higher education institutions and government agencies. They keep offices and phone hot lines open and go out to community events, handing out flyers and giving presentations so people know how they can get insurance under the health care reform law. If somebody needs help navigating the insurance websites, they provide it. And with HealthCare.gov finally performing better, this has been their busiest time since the Oct. 1 launch.

But in 25 states, that robust interest has a downside: Navigators are forced to tell more and more people that they probably won't be able to get covered because their state, all of which had a GOP-controlled legislative chamber or governor, have refused to expand Medicaid. Lynne Thorp, who is overseeing the University of South Florida's navigator program in that state, told TPM that about one in four people who contact her team fall into that Medicaid gap.

"Those are hardest phone calls because it doesn't make any sense to them," Thorp said. "We have to explain that they fall into this gap where this program can't assist them."

full article
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obamacare-navigators-medicaid-expansion

[Tippy]

1. Republican governors and TN has one, are all jerks

This is not the way to win elections...

[SharonAnn]

3. Simply explain that their Republican legislature/governor won't permit them to have insurance.

Elections have consequences and if people don't understand that, they're going to keep wanting Democratic outcomes after the vote in Republican legislatures and governors.

[Tippy]

7. Got that right....2010 changed everything and the religious right was behind most her in TN

[iemitsu]

2. The ACA should have been single payer and provided the same coverage

for all Americans (from cradle to grave). This is the only cost effective and fair way to address health care. Access to good health care needs to be seen as a right not as a commodity.

[Cali_Democrat]

4. And how exactly could a single payer bill pass Congress?

Look how hard it was just to get the ACA through without a public option.

[iemitsu]

6. A fair bill is always worth fighting for, no matter what side you might be on,

but the mish-mosh that is the ACA is opened to criticism from every side.
Successful single-payer systems abound in the industrialized world, medicare and tri-care are great working models from within our own system, yet that was off the table from the start.
The problems associated with the ACA are by design. The American government loves a Noble Failure.

[treestar]

5. It doesn't make sense to them?

So they don't think elections have consequences? Why did they vote Republican? Or if they didn't, what is hard to understand about being surrounded by Republicans?

[warrior1]

8. vote the republican bums out of office

and elect democrats so they can fix the problem.

It's as simple as that.