Showing posts with label OOP maximum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OOP maximum. Show all posts

Monday, January 13, 2014

Just what has a single mother of three lost in Wisconsin's Medicaid "expansion"?

Today's New York Times has an illuminating contrast of how one-party rule is changing life in the "twinned cities" of Duluth, MN (Democratic) and Superior, WI (Republican). The article's finale focuses on how the Affordable Care Act affects people in Minnesota, which runs its own exchange and is implementing "an expansion of the state’s already far-reaching Medicaid system," and Wisconsin, which declined to run its own exchange and has just won federal approval for a conditional Medicaid expansion, which will offer Medicaid to childless adults earning less than 100% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) while at the same time ending existing Medicaid coverage for adults who earn more than 100% FPL*, pushing them onto the exchanges**.

Times reporter Monica Davey found a single mother of three in Superior, WI in the latter category, newly booted off Medicaid because she earns over 100% FPL. Her situation is doubly ironic, in that she works for a nonprofit that serving homeless people -- including helping them sign up for Medicaid -- but is herself a Republican and supporter of Scott Brown Walker. That is perhaps why she has not fully checked out her own options -- which have indeed been worsened by Walker's some win/some lose Medicaid shift, but not as badly as she may think.  The Times article did not delve very deeply into her options  -- so we'll fill in the gap below. Here's the situation: