People more likely to forgo care in states that refused Medicaid expansion: Gov’t study

Poor adults in states that refused to expand Medicaid are more likely to say they’ve gone without needed medical care than those living in states that snapped up federal dollars to extend coverage, a government watchdog said Monday.

The Government Accountability Office used federal survey data from 2016 to compare holdout states to the 31 states that had opted into the core plank of President Obama’s health care law as of last December.

It said 20 percent of low-income people in non-expansion states reported they could not receive needed medical services due to costs, compared to slightly more than 9 percent in expansion states.

Medicaid expansion remains a hotly debated topic across the country.

Voters in Nebraska, Utah and Idaho will decide in November whether to join the dozens of states that are drawing down generous federal funding to cover more people earning slightly above the poverty level. Montana voters will decide whether its expansion should continue or expire.

Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat who supports Obamacare, requested the GAO study to shed light on disparities between states that embraced the program and those that balked. Critics of the expansion say Medicaid is already bloated and that expansion would bust their state budgets.

“States around the country have an opportunity to expand Medicaid to more people — these findings help show why it’s a winning proposition for states and the millions of Americans currently left out of America’s health care system,” he said.

Critics of expansion say Medicaid is already bloated and that expansion would bust their state budgets.

States must pick up an increasing share of the cost of expansion that reaches 10 percent in 2020 and beyond, making fiscal conservatives skittish, though expansion proponents say it’s still a good deal for states.

The GAO defined low-income people as those making 138 percent of the federal poverty level or less — the cutoff for Medicaid eligibility under Obamacare’s expansion.

Among its key findings, the GAO said 18 percent of people in non-expansion states couldn’t afford a needed prescription medication, compared to nearly 10 percent in expansion states.

Roughly 22 percent needed dental care but didn’t get it in non-expansion states, compared to 15 percent in the other states, and 11 percent had to forgo specialist care in non-expansion areas, compared to 6 percent in the others.

The Trump administration, unable to rally Congress to repeal Obamacare, has allowed states to condition Medicaid benefits for able-bodied people on seeking a job, going to school or otherwise engaging in the community.

Arkansas was the first to implement the new rules. It recently booted 4,300 off its rolls for failing to report whether they complied with the requirements.