Montana became the 30th state to opt into the health law’s expansion of Medicaid on Monday, after federal officials said they’d signed off on a plan under which the state would increase the number of low-income residents it covers but impose certain eligibility conditions.
The announcement brings the Obama administration to a critical milestone in its effort to persuade states to go along with a key tenet of the Affordable Care Act, after a 2012 Supreme Court decision that effectively gave the states a choice over the matter.
The health law envisaged extending Medicaid to include most residents with incomes of up to around 33% more than the federal poverty line, or about $15,500 for a single adult. Backers of expanding Medicaid—mostly Democrats, but also some Republicans—see it as a crucial and relatively low-cost way to extend health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, with the federal government footing most of the bill.
Critics, who are mostly Republicans, say neither the federal government nor the states can afford to further expand a program that is already the single biggest source of health coverage in the U.S. and that extended eligibility comes at the expense of Medicaid’s traditional beneficiaries—the poorest of the disabled and elderly. For the full article click here
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