Alabama Voices: Gov. Ivey, GOP still deny Medicaid expansion, leaving poor without care – Montgomery Advertiser

Members of the Save OurSelves Movement for Justice and Democracy hold a press conference on the steps of the State Capitol Building in Montgomery, Ala., on Wednesday March 25, 2020 asking state leaders to approve expansion of Medicaid in Alabama.

Alabama’s coronavirus infections and deaths mount, and among the victims are poor people who fell below ACA income qualifications yet are above the Alabama cutoff for Medicaid.

These same poor often do not go to the doctor except to an emergency room, where they receive high-cost treatment they cannot pay for, and which the rest of us ultimately do pay for.

Meanwhile, the poor — including many working poor — are ill-nourished, have shorter lifespans, generally worse health, and are more prone to serious conditions that are easily treatable and/or preventable with access to health care.

Governor Ivey and the GOP legislative majority deny such access when they reject the Medicaid expansion. This dereliction of duty is especially nonsensical during a pandemic, when low-income uninsured people have no chance of paying for their hospital stays or other treatment.

One of the most urgent and wicked aspects of denying poor people access to health care is that it is directly causing them to die from the coronavirus at higher rates than insured people. People with preexisting conditions such as obesity, coronary artery disease, and type 2 diabetes are more vulnerable to fatal coronavirus outcomes. The poor cannot afford the health care that treats and prevents these conditions. Then, if they contract the virus (which also happens to the poor at higher rates, in part because they have jobs that force them into contact with the virus), they will more likely die than people who don’t have preexisting conditions.

Yet Governor Ivey continues to reject the Medicaid expansion, claiming what the state would have to pay would break the budget. But a UAB study indicates that had Robert Bentley expanded Medicaid in 2014, the state would have generated $20 billion in new economic activity over the last seven years, while providing coverage to more than 300,000 uninsured or underinsured Alabama adults.

Hospitals and clinics, which are absent in some rural areas or are closing, would also benefit from the expansion. Mental health treatment would be available to the new enrollees.