The Nightmare Scenario: Supreme Court Guts Medicaid and Guarantees the Private Insurance Monopoly

[Better Believe It]

The Nightmare Scenario: Supreme Court Guts Public Healthcare and Guarantees the Private Insurance Monopoly
The stakes in the healthcare reform debate became larger as the justices found a new target late Wednesday.
by Steven Rosenfeld
March 29, 2012

At the U.S. Supreme Court this week, most of the attention has focused on whether the new federal healthcare reform can require every American to have a health plan. But as the hearings ended on Wednesday, another prospect came into view that could satisfy the conservative justices' obvious displeasure with the law and it is far more chilling—striking down the expansion of state-run Medicaid programs.

Should the conservatives remove the individual mandate from their bullseye and replace it with Medicaid, it would give right-wing ideologues and the private sector a historic political victory at the expense of a slice of society the GOP has no qualms about beating up: low-income people, particularly women; communities of color; and other underrepresented people.

That scenario is more than troubling: wiping out the government’s largest expansion of healthcare for low-income people since the 1960s while enshrining a private sector monopoly on future healthcare delivery.

Striking the Medicaid expansion and leaving the coverage mandate would shrink the public health sector while enshrining a new private sector healthcare monopoly. It would move the country further away from anything resembling the way healthcare is delivered in every other industrialized nation and set a precedent that Congress cannot do anything big to address big social problems without "coercing" states to be part of the solution.

Read the full article at:

http://www.alternet.org/news/154764/the_nightmare_scenario%3A_supreme_court_guts_public_healthcare_and_guarantees_the_private_insurance_monopoly/

[ProSense]

1. Did people

<...>

What was undeniably clear from the three days of hearings was the court’s conservatives are angling to strike some blow against the healthcare law -- the question is where. And should the conservative justices target Medicaid expansion, it would be giving the anti-government right and corporate Republicans a tremendous victory at the expense of Americans the GOP does not hesitate to marginalize.

These are the same segments of society targeted by the GOP’s tough new voter ID laws. They don’t want poorer people, presumed to be Democrats, to vote. And the 26 red states challenging the Affordable Care Act don’t want them to get health plans, even if it lowers everybody else’s private insurance costs. In short, they don’t want government to work, even if most of the people to be covered by expanded Medicaid live in their states, according to Kaiser's experts.

There is no serious constitutional argument against Medicaid expansion, as the federal government under the reform law was paying 100 percent of the cost in 2014 and had planned to lower that share to 90 percent in 2020. However, there are political fights about how cash-strapped states should pay for their share of this reform—as well as running other public obligations such as public schools and courts—without raising revenues or new taxes.

...think that challenging the health care law was only about the mandate?


The health care law significantly expands Medicaid:

As Medicaid currently stands, it covers children in poverty, pregnant women in poverty, and parents who qualify under some pretty restrictive regulations. Adults without children, however, are often out of luck. In the majority of states, it does not matter how poor childless adults are; they cannot qualify for Medicaid.

As part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Medicaid regulations change. Starting in 2014, all adults, regardless of whether they have children, will be eligible for Medicaid if they earn up to 133% of the federal poverty line. These changes are an enormous expansion of Medicaid, so much so that about half of the newly insured under the ACA will be getting their coverage through the program.

More: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002483563

Could Republican opposition to the mandate be a cover for dismantling the health care law?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002495048

[atreides1]

2. It can happen

Look at how they sold out with Citizens United.

[ProSense]

4. Yes, it can

"the government’s largest expansion of healthcare for low-income people since the 1960s "

That's a fact about the law that some people are unaware of.

[William769]

3. Recommended.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Better Believe It.

[Better Believe It]

6. Kick for weekend DU crew