Past time to act on health care

Georgia, like Alabama, is among the 19 states whose governments have still not seen fit to expand Medicaid in order to qualify for federal funding under the Affordable Care Act.

With about 15 percent of Georgians still without health care coverage — a massive chunk of whose medical expenses ultimately become taxpayer expenses — the political pressure is growing for Georgia to approve Medicaid expansion, which under ACA would cover adults up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

Georgia’s GOP-led legislature still maintains the cost to the state is prohibitive. Meanwhile, according to Georgia Health News, a Georgia Chamber of Commerce task force has been working on an alternative plan.

If it’s as good or better, then by all means let the state put it into practice. Doing nothing, when hundreds of thousands of Georgians, and millions of Americans, still have no health coverage, should be unanimously and universally rejected as an option. The familiar “socialized medicine” hobgoblin already exists — it’s called the emergency room, and we’ve been wasting massive amounts of taxpayer money on it as a primary, secondary and one-stop care venue for decades.

A study released last week by the nonprofit Urban Institute estimates that if the 19 holdout states expanded Medicaid in 2017, as many as 5 million more Americans, and more than 500,000 Georgians, would have access to health coverage. Only Texas and Florida, both with much larger populations, would see higher increases in insured residents.

Brian Robinson, a former aide to Gov. Nathan Deal who is working with the Chamber on the alternative expansion plan, told GHN it calls for Medicaid being available to people up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level — but would cover as many as 565,000 Georgians, a considerably higher figure than what the Urban Institute estimates would be the result of full Medicaid expansion.

The math is intriguing, to put it mildly, and of course the differences are to be found in the details. Those details, incidentally, are still subject to federal approval in order to qualify Georgia for ACA funding.

Either way, it’s poor states like Georgia that have the most to gain by getting in on federal health assistance, and the most to lose by holding out. Dr. Harry Heiman of the Morehouse School of Medicine made specific some facts and trends that ought to be obvious: Uninsured people, he told GHN, are six to seven times less likely to consult a doctor when they get sick, or even if they’re suffering from a chronic illness. The results are frequently catastrophic and expensive, and that expense frequently goes on the public tab. People with health coverage get screenings, earlier diagnoses and preventive care.

Nobody should have to be told any of this, or why it matters. If it’s a matter of politics and who gets the credit (or, perhaps more to the point, who doesn’t), then shame on everybody who’s kept so many people from getting help they’ve needed for so long.

This story was originally published July 25, 2016 at 5:08 PM with the headline "Past time to act on health care."