There are few things more infuriating than Vice President Mike Pence’s face when he plays his doting and loyal to the president character on television. But as abhorrent as Pence’s face may be, his actions are considerably worse. NPR reports that the deal the Pence made in 2015, when he was still the governor of Indiana, in order to expand Medicaid eligibility, is having the adverse affects most people said it would.
Indiana in 2015 implemented some of the most radical changes seen to the state-federal program that covers nearly 1 in 4 low-income Americans — including charging some adults a monthly premium and locking out for six months some of those who don't pay their premiums.
The changes were a part of Indiana's deal with the Obama administration to expand Medicaid eligibility, adding about 240,000 Hoosiers to the Medicaid rolls under the Affordable Care Act.
And what are the early returns on Pence’s “premiums?”
About 25,000 adults were kicked off the Healthy Indiana rolls, between its start in 2015 and October 2017, for failure to pay their premiums, according to state reports. Yet state officials estimate, based on surveys of recipients, that about half of those people found another source of coverage, most often through a job.
Pence had to expand Medicaid in Indiana, and so he created a deal that completely bastardized the process in the hopes of making potential presidential voters forget that he expanded Medicaid while saying Obamacare was the most evil thing since Joseph Stalin ate the American Flag at a dinner with Osama Bin Laden. What made Pence’s version of premiums so heinous is the threshold he put on them.
While premiums are required of all adults added under the expansion, the lockouts apply only to those with incomes from 101 percent to 138 percent of the federal poverty level (about $12,200 to $16,600 for an individual). People with lower incomes — more than 80 percent of Healthy Indiana enrollees — lose their vision and dental benefits for failing to pay the premium.
Remember, Mike Pence is a man that helped create backward healthcare policies that led to a HIV outbreak in his state, and subsequently tried to repeal the laws that fixed the problem he had originally created. The administration he stands behind (and stoically and admiringly slowly nods his head in approval of) wants to demolish Medicaid—for everyone. Think on that and then ask yourself, is Mike Pence doing “God’s work?” He’s doing “somebody’s” work, that’s for sure.