The ACA and Medicaid: Where You Live Matters

Photo by Erich Ferdinand

What a difference a state makes. Ask my friend, a laborer whom I’ll call John.

Some months ago, John realized that a cyst-like lump on his trunk was growing and becoming bothersome. He has no health insurance so he paid out-of-pocket for a physician to examine it. Tests were negative and he was told it was “probably nothing.” The lump continued to grow and became uncomfortable, but John couldn’t afford to have it removed. When he shared this information with me, I told him that he probably qualified for Medicaid in New York State. He looked into it and discovered that he did. He signed up for it and went to a surgeon to remove the lump, now the size of a baseball and causing him increasing discomfort. After the test results came back, the surgeon told John that it was a malignant tumor. Fortunately, there is no evidence of metastasis, and John can proceed with the necessary treatments under Medicaid.

This story would likely have a very different outcome if John lived in Florida, Maine, Idaho, Kentucky or another of the 26 states that have not signed up to expand their Medicaid programs, as called for under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As of September 2013, only 24 states plus the District of Columbia have committed to expanding their Medicaid programs.

How can this be? The 2012 Supreme Court’s review of the constitutionality of the ACA supported the federal government’s right to require that individuals purchase health insurance (the “individual mandate”), but it struck down a requirement that states expand their Medicaid programs to all adults under the age of 65 years who earn 138% or less of the federal poverty level (FPL) (in 2013, the poverty level is $15,626 for an individual and $32,499 for a family of four). States that failed to do so were to have forfeited their existing Medicaid programs that covered mostly women and children under the FPL. (Children ages 6 to 18 who fall at or under the FPL were covered by the existing Medicaid program; under the ACA, they are now covered up to 138% of the FPL under a separate section of the law that is untouched by the Supreme Court ruling.)