As post covid access to some American’s close with Medicaid cuts to the states….
President Biden has sought to erect a safety net for those affected….
The net is in Obamacare….
President Joe Biden is widening a critical window for low-income Americans to join Obamacare, in a move aimed at reinforcing a central element of his reelection bid: That he presided over a historic expansion of health care coverage.
Tens of millions of people eliminated from Medicaid would now have until Nov. 30 to sign up for new coverage under a plan to be announced Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services and first shared with POLITICO — an extension from the July 31 deadline initially set for the special enrollment period.
The new timeline will apply to all those seeking coverage through HealthCare.gov, with officials encouraging state-run insurance marketplaces to adopt the change as well.
The move aims to minimize the number of people losing health insurance coverage in the run-up to the November election as a result of a nationwide purge of state Medicaid rolls. The mass disenrollments are happening for the first time since the pandemic, prompted by the expiration last April of a Covid-era policy meant to prevent vulnerable people from losing coverage amid the health crisis.
More than 19 million people have since been kicked out of the Medicaid program to date, exceeding the administration’s original projections that about 15 million would lose coverage overall. The vast majority of those Americans have lost their insurance for procedural reasons, not necessarily because they were newly ineligible.
It’s a process that’s resulted in the biggest reshuffling of the health insurance landscape since the passage of Obamacare itself. And it’s raised fears that a notable portion of those dropped from Medicaid will end up going uninsured, denting a record of expanding health coverage that Biden has hailed as a key piece of his presidential legacy.
Biden has touted Obamacare’s record-high enrollment on the campaign trail, an achievement spurred in part by legislation that Democrats passed in 2021 expanding the law’s subsidies. He’s vowed to widen health access even further in a second term, while slamming GOP rival former President Donald Trump for suggesting he’d try once again to “terminate” Obamacare.
But the Medicaid unwinding process means the nation’s overall uninsured rate is likely to tick up from its current lows, health experts project. Biden health officials have sought to ease that impact by urging states to direct people toward Obamacare — where they can purchase individual policies — as well as to lengthen the overall disenrollment process and allow more time for people to submit the paperwork needed to keep them on Medicaid….
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