Additional states accepting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion is a matter of time more than anything else, the top federal official implementing President Obama’s healthcare law said Friday.
Speaking with reporters a day after announcing final marketplace enrollment numbers, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell expressed strong confidence that more states eventually will choose to expand the federal health insurance program for low-income Americans while acknowledging it’s not likely to happen under the current administration.
Burwell, who said she is talking with several states including Louisiana about accepting Medicaid expansion, said there’s an “energy” around the country, moving state lawmakers in that direction.
“Whether that energy will come to fruition while I sit in this chair … I think that’s a longer question,” Burwell said. “However, I do think the fact that you see so much energy across the country is a reflection that, in truth, this is a question of when.”
Nineteen Republican-led states have declined to expand their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act, citing concerns about costs to the state and adding millions more people to the program. Proponents for the law have argued it’s worth it to expand because the federal government picks up most of the tab for the new enrollees.
Medicaid expansion is a key part of how Obamacare works to reduce the U.S. uninsured rate, by offering its benefits to those earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level. But under a ruling by the Supreme Court, states can opt in or opt out.
Burwell said that now, several years into the healthcare law, there’s more evidence than ever for states to expand. Some states, including Kentucky, have released studies showing that because more of the formerly uninsured now have coverage, hospitals are seeing large reductions in the number of patients they treat who can’t pay their bills.
“Now we actually have the data to show that in states where expansion has not occurred, they do have a higher percentage of uncompensated care,” Burwell said.
Burwell also said “most people agree” on ensuring the working poor have access to health insurance. Currently, Medicaid programs in many of the non-expansion states are much leaner than envisioned under the law.
“Helping people who are working, playing by the rules to make sure they have health coverage in terms of their financial security is, I think, a concept most people agree on,” Burwell said.
Louisiana is likely to become the next state to expand Medicaid, as newly elected Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is moving forward on his campaign promise to embrace the Affordable Care Act, unlike his Republican predecessor, Gov. Bobby Jindal.
