Louisiana is emerging as a powerful illustration of the huge pent-up demand for health insurance, particularly in red states where elected officials have fought the 2010 Affordable Care Act, The Los Angeles Times reports in a new feature on the health care law.
In June, Louisiana became the 31st state to offer expanded Medicaid coverage through the ACA, effectively guaranteeing health insurance to its residents for the first time.
As of the beginning of August, 265,723 low-income Louisianians have newly signed up for Medicaid, according to state officials.
“People have needed coverage here for a long, long time,” David Hood, who served as state health secretary from 1998 to 2004, tells the newspaper. “This is long overdue.”
Other states that have expanded Medicaid through the ACA are seeing a similar flood of low-income patients seeking insurance. Medicaid sign-ups in Montana are already double what the state expected, just seven months after expansion began there.
More than 15 million people across the country have enrolled in Medicaid and the related Children’s Health Insurance Program since the health law’s coverage expansion began in 2014, federal data show.
Louisiana, which has the nation’s fourth lowest life expectancy, had been among 19 states—many in the Deep South—to reject federal aid made available under the ACA to expand their Medicaid programs. The outpouring since sign-ups began in June has surprised even the program’s biggest advocates.
At CrescentCare, a New Orleans clinic serving low-income patients, people have been calling to ask how they can get dental care and help with mental health, officials there tell The Los Angeles Times.
Dr. Sarah Candler, who worked as a primary care physician at another safety-net clinic in the city, says she cried with one of her patients who recently learned she would get the new Medicaid coverage.
“It was like I got to tell her I cured cancer,” says Candler, adding that the woman had routinely postponed recommended screenings and put off filling her prescriptions because she couldn’t afford them. “It was so powerful to be able to say that I could fix at least one of the things that was making her sick.”
The Los Angeles Times has the full story.
