Medicaid rolls swell amid the

artappraiser — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 23:57:57 +0000

In reply to With Washington Deadlocked on Aid, States Face Dire Fiscal Crises

Medicaid rolls swell amid the pandemic’s historic job losses, straining state budgets

Nevada serves as a cautionary tale, with a 13.5 percent increase in enrollment.

By Amy Goldstein @ WashingtonPost.com, Sept. 14

The unlikely portrait of Medicaid in the time of coronavirus looks like Jonathan Chapin, living with his wife and 11-year-old daughter in a gated community in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Chapin had a thriving Reno, Nev., production company, We Ain’t Saints, booking bands, managing weddings, hosting 600-strong karaoke nights at the Tahoe Biltmore Lodge & Casino. When the novel coronavirus came, forcing northern Nevada’s entertainment industry to go dark, he said, “everything I knew all disappeared.”

The family’s health insurance gone along with their income, Chapin applied online for Medicaid on April 1, the day after his wife’s job ended and three days before he needed a molar pulled. By the time his mouth was throbbing, Chapin and his family had become early additions to Nevada’s Medicaid rolls — rolls swollen now to record levels while pandemic-inflicted fiscal wounds have damaged the state’s ability to afford the safety-net health coverage.

By the most recent count, the roster of Nevadans on Medicaid has climbed from fewer than 644,000 in February, the month before the state reported its first case of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, to about 731,000 through August.

That 13.5 percent increase places Nevada among at least three states, along with Kentucky and Minnesota, where the cadre of people on Medicaid has spiked that much, including families, like the Chapins, who have never before asked for government help. But increases are widespread: Caseloads had risen on average 8.4 percent through July in 30 states for which researchers have enrollment information. And in 14 states with enrollment data through August, the average is 10 percent.

If the past is a guide, this is merely the beginning.

During the Great Recession from late 2007 to mid-2009 and previous bad economic spells in the history of Medicaid, Americans have turned to the program more gradually than to unemployment benefits, food stamps and other aid for people sliding out of comfortable lives. Medicaid is insurance for the poor that is a shared responsibility of the federal government and states, begun as a pillar of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society expansion of government help of the 1960s.

“We believe Nevada has not yet seen the full impact as a result of the covid pandemic,” said the state’s Medicaid director, Suzanne Bierman, echoing expectations elsewhere of experts on the social safety net. [....]

Discord over state and local

artappraiser — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 05:38:04 +0000

In reply to With Washington Deadlocked on Aid, States Face Dire Fiscal Crises

Discord over state and local funds plagues coronavirus talks

@ TheHill.com - 09/07/20 06:26 PM EDT

has particulars about the negotiations

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Medicaid rolls swell amid the

Discord over state and local