Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA) but found that the federal government could not mandate state expansion of Medicaid. According to a Feb. 5 on WHYY, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett announced that he "cannot recommend," expanding Medicaid in the state.
Since the ACA's drafters originally assumed that a certain number of poor citizens would be covered by the Medicaid expansion, Corbett's decision may leave single, poor adults uninsured, Professor Robert Field told WHYY. Particularly "[t]hose who are going to be too rich for Medicaid under the existing formula, but not rich enough for subsidies in the [state health] exchanges," Field said. "It's going to hurt a lot of people who are going to be caught in this never-never world and not be able to afford insurance."
In a previous article on , Field suggested that any decision not to expand Medicaid is politically rooted. “A lot of Republican governors have political qualms with going along with it,” he said.
A failure to expand Medicaid, while leaving state citizens uninsured still allows legal immigrants to be insured through federal insurance subsidies, Field added. Therefore, such a decision might generate political backlash, Field added.
Field is a nationally recognized expert on health care policy and health law. He recently moderated a panel with other experts in the field of public health on the post-election fate of the ACA.