Virginia Governor-elect Northam flipflops on Medicaid expansion in the name of 'Bipartisanship' - Polidicks

[quote]Similarly, Northam said he has no plans to try to force Republicans to accept a broad expansion of Medicaid. Instead, he has begun talks with lawmakers in both parties about overhauling the state’s Medicaid system to expand access to health care while better defining eligibility to control costs. Outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) tried every year to push the legislature to accept millions in federal money to expand the health program to hundreds of thousands of low-income Virginians. Northam campaigned heavily on the promise of getting more Virginians access to health care. He said Friday that he remains committed to that pledge, but that he must be careful about obligating the state to escalating costs. Under the program, the federal government pays the lion’s share in the early years but the state contribution gradually increases. “Medicaid is growing in Virginia by 5 to 7 percent, in that ballpark, every year,” he said. “So I look forward to . . . seeing how we can provide better service and at the same time cut costs” through “managed-care Medicaid,” he said. A managed system would involve rewarding “healthy choices,” he said. “I want people to have skin in the game. I want to incentivize people to really have good health.” And although some people who need Medicaid cannot work — children, some pregnant women, people with certain disabilities — others can, he said. “I want to help them get back on the workforce [through] training,” he said.[/quote] [url]https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/gov-elect-northam-rode-a-democratic-wave-but-now-hes-preaching-bipartisanship/2017/12/16/689e1074-e1b3-11e7-8679-a9728984779c_story.html[/url] Imagine watching the entirety of the Obama presidency unfold and thinking that the right can simply be reasoned with if you concede to them a bit. Who's excited for means testing and work requirements?

Lets add work requirements and means testing to disability pay, that'll get them lazy welfare queens off their disabled butts! Or completely kill them through deadly poverty

[media]https://twitter.com/RalphNortham/status/942448928250826755[/media] Make of this what you will.

I'm in Virginia's Medicaid gap, meaning I'm healthy and male so I don't qualify for Medicaid, but I'm too poor (lol) to qualify for an ACA tax credit for healthcare. At least I'm poor enough that I don't owe money for being uninsured. I hope he means it when he says he wants to expand coverage, but it sounds like weak weasel language. This is why I voted for Perriello in the primaries. Northam is a spineless corporate Dem. [editline]17th December 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=BryndenRivers;52985006][media]https://twitter.com/RalphNortham/status/942448928250826755[/media] Make of this what you will.[/QUOTE] You'd better, you motherfuck.

He's too compromising for his own good. I know it's hard when Republicans still control the state House and whatnot, but he should've stayed strong in public and tried to work deals out in private rather than reveal your cards to everyone.

We don't need bipartisanship in an age of a republican party willing to defend a likely pedophile over a Democrat.

I don't know if the ACA marketplace plans are the same everywhere else, but the ones here are basically just emergency plans that don't cover much of anything until you hit a $7,000 deductible. It's cheaper to just go to local clinics for general care than an insurance approved doctor.

[QUOTE=sgman91;52986426]I don't know if the ACA marketplace plans are the same everywhere else, but the ones here are basically just emergency plans that don't cover much of anything until you hit a $7,000 deductible. It's cheaper to just go to local clinics for general care than an insurance approved doctor.[/QUOTE] The reason for that is that your state very likely hasn't taken the very generous medicaid expansion funds and so everything has to have high deductibles and premiums to compensate for the lack of government subsidies That said according to this website [url]https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/high-deductible-health-plan/[/url] Individual deductibles cannot exceed 6550$

[QUOTE=Sableye;52986744]The reason for that is that your state very likely hasn't taken the very generous medicaid expansion funds and so everything has to have high deductibles and premiums to compensate for the lack of government subsidies That said according to this website [url]https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/high-deductible-health-plan/[/url] Individual deductibles cannot exceed 6550$[/QUOTE] I live in California. So I very much doubt they refused the expansion. I don't think the 6550 includes the separate 500 drug deductible. [editline]19th December 2017[/editline] I was just recently helping a friend enroll and was amazed at how crap it all was, and yet he's still going to end up paying like $800/year after subsidies.

That's pretty good, though. We were on Not-Obamacare in Texas (missed the enroll date) and it wound up being about $2880/year for a ... what was it, $5,000 deductible? So he's paying some 25% of what we paid in exchange for better benefits it sounds like. (Mind: We shopped around a lot - this was the cheapest plan we could find that actually covered things we'd want covered and was rated trustworthy by its customers)

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;52990445]That's pretty good, though. We were on Not-Obamacare in Texas (missed the enroll date) and it wound up being about $2880/year for a ... what was it, $5,000 deductible? So he's paying some 25% of what we paid in exchange for better benefits it sounds like. (Mind: We shopped around a lot - this was the cheapest plan we could find that actually covered things we'd want covered and was rated trustworthy by its customers)[/QUOTE] Did your plan have any coinsurance/copay coverage before the deductible? (The cost you listed is about what it would have been without the subsidy) The plans he had to pick from, the cheaper ones anyway, had almost literally zero help before hitting the cap.

A very minimal amount if I recall correctly. Something like 'we'll pay half of the first 100 of any bill that's specifically a doctor's visit, not covering prescriptions, etc. - up to 300 dollars a year on that I think?' What we got wasn't 'health insurance', to be extra clear, it was 'oh fuck' insurance.