this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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wtf is going on in Oklahoma, Missouri, Maine, North Carolina, Indiana, etc? Expand Medicaid and still be in the red for medical debt 🤨
We voted to expand it but our Governor hates Missourians so they aren't doing anything with the $$
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996611586/missouri-will-not-expand-medicaid-despite-voters-wishes-governor-says
Cool cool cool.
How is this legal lol
"yeah sorry theres no money for expanding medicaid. but of course we have the money to fight the resulting legal battles"
Oklahoma just recently passed the Medicaid expansion via direct vote. The government did its best to stop it, but the voters ended up prevailing.
So what do they do? Instead of just running a Medicaid program as intended and as their constituents demanded, they did their best to privatize the Medicaid expansion.
This week BCBS, Humana, and i believe Edna now run our Medicaid program. Basically the governor is just throwing millions of dollars at them and allowing them to decide what and who is covered.
Medicaid was expanded in NC only a few months ago, hence why we look like an un-expanded state still.
Because the red is largely just a map of poor areas on average.
Aside from preventative care, Medicare generally doesn't pay for all medical expenses, just a percentage. When you're left paying 20% coinsurance for most urgent needs you get saddled with massive debt you can't climb out of. Medicaid covers more of the gap but is still limited. Private plans more commonly cover 100% after a deductible. Some states like Massachusetts have chosen to expand it further than other states. We're a bad example for this map though because we have so few counties.
The entire map could be 0 mean debt if we had true single payer healthcare.
It's also interesting seeing how this is a mean, not median. I suspect if median was shown almost all counties would be 0. There's a lot more stats that could be used to show why the southern states are losing out though.
Maine has the oldest demographic in the US, and the lowest median income in the northeast.
some red? I don't understand. Do you think the expanded medicaid is a cure all? Its not universal healthcare it just reduces the red from where you see it in the intense red areas.
A lot of red! Look at Oklahoma! Or Missouri!
California is some red. One red county, fine.
More than a dozen? Something is seriously wrong in these states and I want to know why Medicaid expansion didn't fix it. There's an explaination, don't just handwave it away.
Oklahoma’s expansion just took effect this year. Source: I FINALLY qualified.
Oklahoma expanded Medicaid in 2020. Most of these states expended it over a decade ago. A lot of debt buildup occurred in that time. Not sure about the other indebted states but I wouldn't be surprised if they were similar
Oh fk the Medicaid expansion didn't come with debt relief, of course, I guess I forgot what country this is 😒
Now that you reduced it to two outliers fair enough. Apparently in only helps in something like 96% of cases. To repeat. Its not a cure all. Just an improvment.
🙄 I just didn't feel like retyping. Look at North Carolina and Nevada. They're so bad!
I got an answer for Missouri by the way, it's because the Republican governor won't implement the Medicaid expansion that the people vote for - that's the kind of answer I want. Stop handwaving the problem and actually critically engage with it.
Its not handwaving. Your just asking for things way outside of what the data shows. Yeah could be implementation as there are better and worse ways to do it, but it could also be what the rest of the states healthcare system is like. North carolina im not so sure is super red. Maybe my map knowledge is off but nevada looks a bit regional. Its possible gambling and general debt could be effecting it. It could be all sorts of things. This picturejust shows that in general expanding medicaid seems to correlate with less medical debt.
Yes, I'm asking for additional context to understand the data in the picture. Duh?
Thats fine. Im not sure how many or if any studies may have been done but I certainly have no links to any for that type of inquiry. I am skeptical that anyone could give you more than a guess answer.
I've gotten some interesting explanations for specific states so I got what I wanted anyway🤷♀️
Some people can get free health insurance if they jump through enough hoops and paperwork but when you actually have to use it it turns out it only covers the first $3.50.