Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards issued an executive order on January 14 to expand Medicaid to the state.
Governor John Bel Edwards of Louisiana enacted an executive order on January 14 to expand Medicaid through Obamacare in the state. The order will be effective July 1, 2016.
Obamacare, also known as Affordable Care Act (ACA), is a healthcare reform law that aims to care for the health of U.S. citizens. More specifically, this law helps lower-income family access an affordable health care through taxes. Barack Obama made it his primary objective to pass this healthcare reform law, and signed it on March 23, 2010. The Supreme Court upheld this law on June 28, 2012.
The ACA has been met with mixed responses over its lifetime. Some conservatives argue that Obamacare is inefficient and detrimental to the economy because it is too expensive. The objective of The Affordable Care Act is to insure health care benefits to Americans at a low cost; however, Obamacare premium is predicted to escalate 20.3 percent on average in 2016 rather than a 7.5 percent increase projected, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Due to the fact that almost 1 in 4 Americans is covered by Medicaid, taxpayers are now paying more than $500 billion out of their pockets, according to the Los Angeles Times. Insurance premiums are exponentially increasing, and more than 7 million people would rather pay less in penalties than to be covered by ACA, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“The ACA has reduced uncompensated care costs across the board—by $5.7 billion in fiscal 2014 compared with what they could have been otherwise,” the Department of Health and Human Services stated.
On the other hand, supporters show through statistics that Medicaid, with the latest addition of Obamacare, has benefited up to 17 million Americans since 2013. The big improvement allowed many people to be insured under the health care umbrella, they argue. Furthermore, ACA has drastically reduced the amount of people without health insurance in half a century.
Despite the growth of people insured with Obamacare, the latest study by Moody’s Investors Service claims that nonprofit hospitals under this expanded Medicaid are unsatisfied with the results thus far. Instead of a result of reduced debt and monetary progress at hospitals, they face unpaid bills, and Americans paying out of their own pockets, the study says.
Previous Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana was against passing ACA in the state, and due to his actions, Baton rouge hospitals emergency rooms are shutting down.
After Governor Edwards' executive order, Louisiana will now become the 31st state to pass this healthcare reform law and will be the first to do so in the Deep South.
