Question about ACA and its impact on me and others like me:

[coalition_unwilling]

I currently have no health insurance.
I currently am unemployed and no longer receiving unemployment insurance.
I cannot afford to pay for private health insurance, since I am unemployed.

I figure the 'mandate' ('tax') is irrelevant to my situation because I have so little income.

So here's my question:

how and when does ACA help (or hurt) me and others like me? Today? In 2014?

I'm a resident of California, in case that's germane.

[elleng]

1. Presumably you're eligible for medicaid,

and if your state maintains their medicaid program, you (and many more) are covered thereby.

[gkhouston]

3. I wouldn't be too quick to presume that.

It's possible to be unemployed with too many assets to be eligible for Medicaid and too few to pay for private insurance.

[elleng]

4. ACA should remedy that.

[woo me with science]

5. Yeah, they "should."

Is it anywhere on the horizon? No.

[elleng]

7. My mistake. Should have said WILL remedy that.

'The law would expand Medicaid coverage to everyone with incomes under 133 percent of the federal poverty level. In 2012, that's $14,856. In practice, the expansion will mostly cover adults without children or disabilities, since low-income children, parents and those with disabilities are mostly already eligible.

But unlike the rest of Medicaid, whose costs are mostly shared between the federal government and the states, the federal government picks up the entire cost of the additional coverage for the first several years; eventually states have to pay 10 percent.'

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/06/27/155861308/medicaid-expansion-goes-overlooked-in-supreme-court-anticipation

[gkhouston]

6. Hope so. I expect Congress to go through all sorts of contortions (again!) to try

to modify the existing law.

[coalition_unwilling]

2. One self-kick for increased exposure - n/t