Biden to reopen ACA insurance marketplaces as pandemic has cost millions of Americans their coverage

[BumRushDaShow]

28. "All states must expand Medicaid."

Obama tried with the original PP-ACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) and that was one of the first things that the SCOTUS threw out despite upholding most of the rest of the law -

Emotions high after Supreme Court upholds health care law

Bill Mears and Tom Cohen, CNN
Updated 9:23 PM EDT, Thu June 28, 2012

(snip)

In another part of Thursday’s decision, the high court ruled that a part of the law involving Medicaid must change.

The law calls for an expansion of eligibility for Medicaid, which involves spending by the federal government and the states, and threatens to remove existing Medicaid funding from states that don’t participate in the expansion. Thursday’s ruling said the government must remove that threat.

https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/28/politics/supreme-court-health-ruling/index.html

The battle over Medicaid expansion in 2013 and 2014, explained

By Andrew [e-mail] Updated May 12, 2015, 3:46pm EDT


Across the country, states fought over whether to except Obamacare's expansion of the program for low-income Americans.

What is the battle over the Medicaid expansion?

Before Obamacare passed in 2010, eligibility requirements for Medicaid — the health program covering low-income people — varied across the country. For instance, in Illinois, parents with two children making up to $40,700 — 185 percent of the federal poverty line — could qualify for the program. But in Alabama, parents with two children earning a mere $2,500 a year — 11 percent of the federal poverty line — could not. And low-income adults without any children couldn't qualify at all in the vast majority of states.

Obamacare's authors wanted to make more people eligible for Medicaid, and to make the eligibility rules more uniform overall. So the law contained an expansion of Medicaid to everyone making beneath 138 percent of the federal poverty line — more generous coverage than any state had previously offered.

But there's a catch: a subsequent Supreme Court ruling let states reject the expansion, and many states with Republican governors or legislatures have done just that. As of January 2015, only 28 states had signed on so far.

https://www.vox.com/2015/1/27/18088994/medicaid-expansion-explained