Medicaid Expansion Life and Death Issue

April 29, 2014 Leave a comment


By Jon Bailey, jonb@cfra.org, Center for Rural Affairs
Charlene Dill was a 33 year old mother of three in Orlando, Florida. She worked three jobs to support her family. She had a treatable heart condition. Charlene also fell into the “coverage gap” – she made too much money (a whole $9,000 per year) to qualify for Medicaid in Florida, too little to qualify for a subsidy to purchase insurance on the new health insurance marketplaces, and none of her jobs provided health insurance. She was uninsured. Florida decided not to expand their Medicaid program as allowed under the Affordable Care Act to cover low-income working people like Ms. Dill. On March 21, while working one of her jobs, she collapsed and died on a stranger’s floor from the preventable condition for which she could not get treatment.

Let us pray there are no Charlene Dills that suffer the same fate in Nebraska. But there likely are. Research shows that there will be at least 500 preventable deaths in Nebraska due to the Legislature’s failure to expand Medicaid to our low-income working friends and neighbors.

State Senators Bloomfield, Brasch, Coash, Garrett, Janssen, Kintner, Larson, McCoy, Murante, Scheer, Schilz, Seiler, Smith and Watermeier opposed attempts in both the 2013 and 2014 Legislature to expand Medicaid to those in the “coverage gap.” They would not even allow a vote to provide health insurance coverage for these working adults. They may all be back serving in the Legislature in 2015. Let’s hope they can figure out this is a life and death issue, not a political game.

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