Rob: That's phenomenal,
isn't it?
Dr.
Sommers: Well, yeah. It's
good news. It's certainly--we would hope that if we're going to spend a lot of
money on a program to provide insurance coverage to adults that it actually has
some impact and it was encouraging to see both coverage went up and the number
of uninsured adults went down as well as the number of adults who said they
were unable to obtain medical care that they needed because of costs. That went
down. So we were seeing barriers to care eliminated by the Medicaid expansion
and then ultimately that seemed to translate into better health and better
survival.
Rob: About how many
people did this expanded Medicare reach to?
Dr.
Sommers:: So, the expansion--I
just wanted to clarify. Medicaid is the program for the poor and Medicare tends
to be for the elderly, 65 and over and while they both are key programs, the
one that's really at stake under the "Affordable Care Acts" expansion would be
Medicaid.
Rob: / Okay. Okay.
Dr.
Sommers: / And what we saw
there in terms of the numbers who are enrolled, about half a million, about 500,000
adults signed up in these three states under this new, expanded eligibility.
Rob: Okay, half a million
in your study in these three states that you've looked at, how many would be
affected when the new health care program comes in?
Dr.
Sommers: The national
expansion under the "Affordable Care Act" was initially expected to happen in
all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, and the predication from the
Congressional budget office was that this would lead to about 16 or 17 million
adults gaining insurance through Medicaid. Right now the situation's changed a
little bit since the Supreme Court ruling, because the Supreme Court
effectively gave states the option of whether or not they want to expand their
coverage under Medicaid and so that number may be significantly lower if
several states choose not to expand Medicaid and right now that's the big
debate at the state level--is whether or not to accept the expansion.
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