berg80
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- Oct 28, 2017
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OMAHA, NEBRASKA HAS BEEN BUSTLING with activity these past few days thanks to the annual Berkshire Hathaway weekend, when tens of thousands of investors from around the world gather to hobnob with Warren Buffett while they figure out how to maximize their portfolios.
But inside one office, a woman named Amy Behnke has been preoccupied with something very different and much more urgent. She has been furiously working the phones with state officials, trying to figure out how to keep some of Nebraska’s poorest residents from losing their health insurance.
Behnke is CEO of the Nebraska Health Center Association, which represents clinics that provide care to the state’s underserved population. Since 2020, she tells me, the percentage of total patients showing up to member clinics with no insurance at all—the ones who represent the biggest drain on clinic finances—has dropped from half to one-third.
That’s a sign of progress, and it’s no mystery what’s behind it. In October 2020, Nebraska officially became part of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. By taking advantage of federal funding that the state’s GOP officials had long refused—but that voters eventually approved via ballot measure—Nebraska was able to open up its program to any citizen or qualifying legal resident with income below 138 percent of the federal poverty line.
www.thebulwark.com
It seems trump devotees who avail themselves of Medicaid coverage are going to be in for another rude, trumpian awakening. Added to the list of awakenings like the cost of living, the price of gas, and a war with Iran with no apparent end in sight. All things they were promised not to have to deal with if they just gave a self-interested, convicted criminal another chance to run the country. What could go wrong? Turns out, a lot.
But inside one office, a woman named Amy Behnke has been preoccupied with something very different and much more urgent. She has been furiously working the phones with state officials, trying to figure out how to keep some of Nebraska’s poorest residents from losing their health insurance.
Behnke is CEO of the Nebraska Health Center Association, which represents clinics that provide care to the state’s underserved population. Since 2020, she tells me, the percentage of total patients showing up to member clinics with no insurance at all—the ones who represent the biggest drain on clinic finances—has dropped from half to one-third.
That’s a sign of progress, and it’s no mystery what’s behind it. In October 2020, Nebraska officially became part of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. By taking advantage of federal funding that the state’s GOP officials had long refused—but that voters eventually approved via ballot measure—Nebraska was able to open up its program to any citizen or qualifying legal resident with income below 138 percent of the federal poverty line.
Trump’s Big Medicaid Cuts Are About to Get Very Real
Nebraska will be the first test of how many people lose insurance—and who they are.
www.thebulwark.com
It seems trump devotees who avail themselves of Medicaid coverage are going to be in for another rude, trumpian awakening. Added to the list of awakenings like the cost of living, the price of gas, and a war with Iran with no apparent end in sight. All things they were promised not to have to deal with if they just gave a self-interested, convicted criminal another chance to run the country. What could go wrong? Turns out, a lot.
Wikipedia
