Where do America’s Most Uninsured States Stand on the Obamacare Medicaid Expansion?

November 1, 2012, Updated February 21, 2013

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Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin addresses a Republican Super Tuesday watch party in Oklahoma City in March 2012. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Oklahoma: Opting out
21.9% uninsured

Oklahoma’s Mary Fallin, a Republican, delayed her decision until after the presidential election, saying that she thought the Affordable Care Act was unrealistic at both the state and federal level, but that she was not ready to reject the Medicaid expansion. “There’s still a lot of unanswered questions,” Fallin said. “We think it’s important to be thoughtful.” On Nov. 19, Fallin announced that Oklahoma would opt out of both the opportunity to create its own health care exchange and the Medicaid expansaion.

“It does not benefit Oklahoma taxpayers to actively support and fund a new government program that will ultimately be under the control of the federal government, that is opposed by a clear majority of Oklahomans and that will further the implementation of a law that threatens to erode both the quality of American health care and the fiscal stability of the nation,” Fallin said.

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TOPICS: Democracy & Government, Equality, Health & Science

TAGS: alaska, brian sandoval, california, economic inequality, florida, georgia, jerry brown, Mary Fallin, medicaid, medicare, mississippi, montana, Nathan Deal, nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Phil Bryant, Rick Hill, rick perry, rick scott, sean parnell, Steve Bullock, Susana Martinez, texas

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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1526283317 David Lewis
Perry has the worse record for uninsured citizens and will compound that problem. Smart states see the why to insure everyone and preventive care will drive down costs over the next decades–proven all over the world
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mikki-Mack/1427792927 Mikki Mack
Shame on Perry! It is his CHRISTIAN duty to help those less fortunate. He needs reminding that To whom much is given, much is expected.
http://www.facebook.com/david.m.mcdevitt Dave McDevitt
Looking at this report shows how partisan this issue is; the symptom that 1 out of 5, in the case of Texas 1 out of 4, people being uncovered speaks to the immorality and greed of some at the expense of many.
http://www.facebook.com/michael.bludworth.5 Michael Bludworth
Perry doesn’t work for God…he works for the gold!
Ruth MacLaurin
Speaking as a Canadian, I am totally baffled by Governor Rick Perry view on Obamacare, especially with such a high proportion of uninsured citizens. Canadians have had government health insurance since the 1960′s, any extended health care plan we want to layer on top of that government health insurance we select (and pay for) from a private insurance company. Personally I think Sweden and Denmark have the best government health insurance systems in the world. They are also the top countries in environmental research and application. They seem to be among the “happiest” nations in the world, Canada is not far behind on the official “world happy scale”.
jeanne kaster
Rick Perry has corrupted the state of Texas with double dealing crooked policies. He care nothing for the citizens of our state.
DarqueSideOfTheMoon
A Republican putting ideology above the health and welfare of the People. Imagine my surprise!
Britta
I was born in Denmark, is 68 years old, and don’t remember ever getting billed for seing a doctor or going to the hospital. My husband was in the service for 26 years where we were taken care of by military and civilian doctors so sort of universal health care and the care was always extremely good, it is hard to understand that a country like the United States is so far behind that they will let their people die because the don’t have insurance, as long as we let corporations buy elections nothing will change.
wise woman
I live in one of the not participating states and believe me it is a state that is first in domistic violence, around last in education, and forget child health and care of the mother, of course they won’t particapate in anything that will help the people of this state and sadly the voters just continue to vote against their own best interests. Can’t figure them out. It is a very sad.
Joan Johnson
I’m confused–is Perry bragging that Texas has the highest proportion of uninsured residents in the country? Hard to understand why he prefers this.
Ilha
Along these lines, perhaps the idea that, “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
…” applies
http://www.facebook.com/woodguy11 Raymond Fristrom
the republican mantra is if your sick hurry up and die/ the GOP idealogy is soon to come to and end .they will fight tooth and nail untill they are brought to their knees. they are a selfish lott
http://www.facebook.com/karl.kettner.9 Karl Kettner
Same old stuff, “I got mine. YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN!”
charlie
Most people in the US think universal healthcare is a bad thing. I live in the US and don’t understand why so many think it’s bad for our country.
charlie
You’re right. Some people don’t get it and some people don’t understand politics very well.
http://www.facebook.com/juerohloff Julie Rohloff
exactly!
Bunu
If you mean by “ideology” G O (el) D”, than, sure enough, he’s an “ideolog”.
Personally, I do not believe that he has ANY idea of his own in his head.
Agent099
My USA METH LAB MAP are same states with worst education and states most hungry children & seniors and states with worst and most expensive medical care and states with MOST POVERTY are all Repub states?
Nancy Cuddeback
They are opting out because they will be stuck paying for half of the expanded Medicaid bill. Medicaid may be a Federal program but, it’s not entirely paid for by the Federal government. If these states are successful in opting out, their poverty will just shift to other states that offer expanded coverage.
Nancy Cuddeback
Oh so now you’re going to blame Republicans for meth labs? Really?
Agent099
Blame? No blame ‘facts’ they are all Repub states ran into dirt.
Jack Wall
Gov. Art Pope of NC (via his puppet, Asst. Gov. Pat McCrory) has elected to opt out; this morning there was an article which reviewed a study concluding that NC would greatly benefit by opting into Medicaid expansion. The Republican-dominated legislature is hellbent on pushing Pope’s extreme conservative agenda in this state. There is no legitimate reason for opting out. We will suffer greatly.
Anonymous
Speaking as an American now living in Florida; Gov. Perry’s decision to “socializ(ing) health care and bankrupt(ing) my state”, will succeed in withholding health care from many of the uninsured while bankrupting provider institutions & individuals who are forced to provide services to the uninsured in emergent situations. By the time the governor magnanimously “reverses” his position on this, many of the smaller providers will have gone out of business in Texas. Many Americans know this, including many Republicans. They just either don’t care or would rather obstruct any advances made by the administration.
puzzled
I think it is intentional they keep them ignorant, not well taken care of and brain wash them. These states vote for people who most often represent the rich…make hugh personal profits while in office but these people don’t see understand or get it.
http://www.facebook.com/roy.pearson.3139 Roy Pearson
Ignorance and insistence on listening to ignorant sources and propaganda..
Happycat
Yes, it’s much better to have a state full of dying and sick people. Texans need to get rid of their clown governor.
“If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Richard
I don’t think that many of you understand that when Obamacare really does kick in down goes the quality of your healthcare. You might get it yes, but no doctor wants to work for free. I work in healthcare and see many without insurance but they at least try to pay for what they absolutely need they don’t come in unless dying. Yes they will get healthcare but in the long run with Obama’s tax cuts (which were not really cuts) they still pay for it. Those that are sucking the system dry are those who are on medicaid not going to school to get educated, and those in the welfare program. They expect us as citizens of the U.S. to pay for everybody else, which we will through higher taxes. Amen to Governor Rick Perry for standing up for what is right not what fits into your socialistic healthcare plan.
jeenious
The American Way is to talk so as to make it sound like one is sticking to the Constitution while distorting what the compromises were that made the Constitution attractive to both rich and poor, to both bankers and farmers, to both people in sparsely populated areas, to both people who had arrived a some quality of life and people who were still in process of trying to arrive at it…
The American Way is to talk as if we were a democracy, when we are a plutocracy.
The American Way is to deny health care to millions, and to accuse those who try to provide it as being “death squads.”
The American Way is for politically elected officials who are greedy and for sale to the highest bidder as people whose only goal is to keep that “other party” out of office, and thus provide a Utopia (when there are for-sale politicians in EACH and BOTH parties.
The American Way is for the politically elected to privatize everything that can be privatized, so prices can be RAISED to put money into the pockets of the mere handful of top corporate insiders whose ONLY goals are to pocket millions for their human selves and to patronize politicians who modify the laws and regulations so as to make exceptions to enable that, or to look the other way when laws not yet so modified are flagrantly and blatantly broken by human top corporate insiders. (Corporations are not run by lower-ranking employees, nor by their shareholders whom it is legal to mislead now — thanks to loopholes the bought politicians insert into the laws to make exceptions for them to omit including in legally required financial statements or other pseudo-disclosure forms. Corporations are run by a mere handful of human managing insiders. But those corporate insiders are treated as untouchable, by hiding behind the corporate veil.)
The American Way is for the wealthiest tenth of one percent of humans — many of them made rich by their roles as corporate insiders, especially in banking, finance and military industrial corporations, and often as a result of CRIMES, or acts that WERE crimes, before well-rewarded politicians fudged the laws that so provided — to determine whether any given corporation operates ethically and within the laws, or as a culture of crime.
The American Way is for privatization of public utilities, health and hospitalization, and anything else they can get their hands on and to assert FALSELY that private businesses (meaning not individual ownership, but corporations that are run by mere handfuls of human corporate managing insiders, who (thanks again to elected officials who insert loopholes into the laws for the purpose) can rake off millions of dollars without permission of shareholders, for their personal human selves, even when they are exposed as having committed enormous crimes, and even if the corporation goes bankrupt under their human management of it.
The American Way is to allow the wealthiest human individuals (or corporations they run behind the corporate veil) to BUY THE NEWS MEDIA and control what facts they cherry pick to camouflage their (those human criminals’) crimes, to vilify anyone who would expose those crimes, to crush whistle blowers, to character assassinate any media employees who seek to expose them if the public starts to learn too much inconvenient truth for their (the media buyers’) comfort.
To Ruth MacLaurin, of Canada, who indicated Canadians have been happy with their healthcare system that they’ve had since the 1960s. Haven’t you heard yet? Everybody in American “knows” — because their wealthiest corporate managers, the news media OWNED BY those human elite who are the corporate managers, and the politicians BOUGHT OFF by those human corporate elite,
have told them so: that you Canadians HATE your pathetic, senseless, unaffordable, horrendous, death squad forming healthcare system????????????
Not to say that you hate it would be… UNAMERICAN.
Hey, just thank God for your good fortune, Ruth.
It’s impossible, it cannot work, it would bankrupt Canada, etc., etc., etc., etc. If you don’t know that, you haven’t been listening to Fox News, Talk Radio, and hundreds of Republican politicians who are trying to SAVE America from such a system. ( : > )
Aren’t you sorry you live under such a rotten government as you are painted by our Republican politicians tell this nation you are victim to? ( : > ).
http://www.facebook.com/qwiknf Steve Irwin
It’s an election year for Scott. He is doing anything to bring up his ratings and dismal record as governor.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004673321689 Micah Bill
It is because of racism and propaganda. Racist whites are afraid it is going to be used to insure minorities who in their view deserve to die of their illnesses just because. Racist whites think that most gov’t aid goes to other ethnic groups instead of poor whites, which it does overwhelmingly.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004673321689 Micah Bill
I am pretty incensed by the fact that the states opting out are going to cause health insurance to go through the roof. That is freaking criminal but they are getting their marching orders from their republican bosses so that obamacare will be easier to kill in a few years when Obama is out of office. They want to insure it doesn’t serve the people it’s supposed to and that everyone has to pay a price.
http://www.facebook.com/roguemalejlm James Martin
Why should I want Obamacare? I make too much money to use it and I pay cash when I need to see a doctor. All Obamacare is to me is an added expense.
http://twitter.com/papermooner PAPERMOONER
What a bunch of morons. Everyday I become more and more amused at the willful ignorance these dig your heels in refusers to progress and turn the tide against a corporate welfare state toward a fairer, more productive, healthy and forward thinking visionary country to take back the reigns of the future and lead the world. Nope. They choose bigotry, political gamesmanship, self-serving, lobbyist back slapping, big business over the people each and every day. They need to drop dead and get out of the way and let their betters LEAD.
http://twitter.com/papermooner PAPERMOONER
CHeck out my film THE FOXORCIST: THE LAST EXORCISM precisely aimed at these cretins. They live and destroy this country every day on a daily diet of denial, willfulness, and contempt for the average working American. YOU-TUBE IT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj9tbRN5GeA
http://twitter.com/papermooner PAPERMOONER
I’m so sorry you inhabit a State where the people are too stupid to see that fact and vote these buttheads out. Good luck…
http://twitter.com/papermooner PAPERMOONER
i hope your dick falls off…no money will buy it back.
Dana
Never read so many absolutely clueless posts in my life. It would be great if we could insure all the uninsured in America. The reason why so many employers and individuals hate Obamacare is the way it accomplishes this coverage and the tremendous costs increase it will cause. At a time when we have the worst unemployment (and growth in decades) Obama is trying to put the final nail in the coffin. Big business may be ok, but small employers are hurting and they employ almost 80 million in US. Very few die in america because of lack of healthcare and many low paid workers choose to go without healthcare (if they have to make any contribution to it). We have 500 virtually uninsured employees because all they have is a mini-medical plan which gives them two or three visits to doctor and maybe one day in hospital. If they get a serious illness they show up at the public hospital and they are cared for (hospital cannot legally send them away), but the hospital eats the bill. This is obviously not the best system but if you think most low paid workers will end up with actual coverage under obamacare you are in fantasy land. The bronze plans have 2000 to 3000 deductibles and 9.5% (of wage) employee contributions; when these bronze plans are offered by employers there are no subsidies or tax credits for employee contributions. Most low paid employees (under $12.00 per hour) cant afford a 9.5% contribution and wont take the plan from their employer. When the employee rejects the employers plan he cannot get any subsidy in the exchange plans so he will end up with NO INSURANCE and will pay the penalty. On top of this family coverages for those a little better off (50k to 100k and up) are expected to be 26000 per year. We offer plan that pays 100% of covered cost now for under 15k per year but its going up and will end up in the 20-30k renge once Obamacare exchanges are fully implemented. So we will have to also raise deductibles and employee contributions just to keep insurance for our employees. So families with existing coverage will see it become much more expensive and cover less (thank you Obamacare). I guess we could solve everything by raising the minimum wage to $30.00 per hour and every one would be upper middle class, but of course unemployment would triple because you put half the businesses (or more) out of work. Personally there is no comparable country in the world that can even hold a candle to the US. If we would stop subsidizing the rest of the world we could do more for our citizens without killing our economy with taxes. If Obama would quit chasing green energy butterflies and develop the carbon based fuels on government lands we could get out of the middle east forever and pay for whatever benefits we need.
KentuckyKid
Check out Switzerland and Korea.
ANTHONY
After reading all your comments for obamacare it proves none of you know what it is about. When Pelosi say’s you have to pass it to find out whats in it, that was the first sign it not a good plan. Nobody can tell americans what it will cost, who is going to pay for it ,and what it will really provide. My friends who had great insurance ,said thier insurance nearly tripled since it passed. And people forgot that he made the deal behind closed door’s with the insurance companie’s. So who do you think will get better end of this deal. Poloticians dont even pay for health care in this country and they recieve millions in kick backs IDIOTS GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM
Di
Speaking as a Texan, Perry is a total self-centered A–! He is going to turn down free funds from government, which are available for states that don’t opt out, the expanded program would cover anyone making under $15,400 — or $30,650 for a family of four — starting in 2014. The federal government will pick up 100 percent of the cost for the first three years, with states assuming a portion of the cost starting in 2017 — 5 percent until 2019, and 10 percent thereafter, etc. The whole country saw him during the debates, and why people in TX would continue to vote that jerk into office is beyond comprehension.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Lisa-Elkins-Goodman/1400727083 Lisa Elkins Goodman
This money has a cap on it. If the federal government does not fulfill its obligation completely (imagine that), this will become a very real downward pressure issue for state governments. How is this really going to work a few years down the road?
http://twitter.com/AdamOnTheWeb Adam Crocker
My big problem with the President’s plan is and always has been his attempt to make it palatable to the health insurance industry. Insurance companies may have started out as well-intentioned experiments in risk management, but the corporate beheamoths that dominate the market these days have no interest in providing a public service. They are slaves to profit reports and the whims of shareholders. They are victims of their own greed and have completely mismanaged their own market with no regard to the well-being of their customers.
Universal, single-payer (gov’t) health care has a proven record of improving public health and quality of life in a number of nations already mentioned. American hubris and knee-jerk reaction to words like ‘socialism’ and ‘government’ gives opponents all the ammo they need to fan the flames of opposition. Converting health care to a SOCIAL GOOD rather than a ‘free-market’ opportunity for corporations to provide as little as possible for maximum mark-up is the battle that has been neglected.
Two questions I have for the lot of you who oppose any efforts to move toward universal health coverage: First, does the cost of government providing wellness protection for all Americans fail to offset the cost of forcing the uninsured to wait until a medical crisis before seeking medical attention? You can even leave the impossible-to-measure beneficial effect of reduction in stress caused by having no health coverage out of the equation.
Second: Purely on a cost basis, would government waste and inefficiency in managing national health care exceed the profit mark-up demanded by private sector management of our health-care industry? Again, feel free to ignore private sector profit-maximizers as ‘denial of coverage’ and ‘lifetime limits’ for the chronically ill.
Oh, and one final question (for my own amusement): does anybody here not drive on federal interstate highways in protest of the highway system’s government-funded status?