GOP’s heartless new scheme to prevent uninsured from getting care [View all]

[babylonsister]

Wednesday, Sep 4, 2013 02:13 PM EST
GOP’s heartless new scheme to prevent uninsured from getting care
Salon analysis shows GOP is targeting states with most uninsured, and bogging down their Obamacare implementation
By Brian Beutler


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Last week, as several other outlets reported, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to state agencies and nonprofit groups that received Obamacare “navigator” grants — organizations that will help educate people about the law and facilitate their enrollment — seeking an incredibly broad and difficult-to-compile range of information.

The effort’s pretty clearly intended to bog down the navigators ahead of enrollment, which could easily reduce the number of people who end up insured under the law. Republicans claim that the inquiry is intended to protect beneficiaries’ private information.

But if the goal were to establish best practices for the navigators, they have a strange way of going about it. All of the navigator grant recipients are based in states with federally facilitated exchanges and states partnering with the feds to stand up their marketplaces. Salon’s analysis reveals that among these states, Republicans directed their inquiries to organizations in states with the largest uninsured populations.

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Of all the states that aren’t setting up their own exchanges, these 11 states are among the 15 with the highest uninsured populations, according to census data compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Those 15, in order, are Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, Arizona, Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri and Indiana.

All of these states, with the exceptions of Michigan, Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee, are home to organizations Republicans targeted. Michigan is home to Rep. Fred Upton — the committee chairman.

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http://www.salon.com/2013/09/04/gops_heartless_new_scheme_to_prevent_uninsured_from_getting_care/