17 October 2013 (23:01 UTC-07 Tango 16 October 2013)/12 Dhu’l-Hijja 1434/25 Mehr 1391/13 Ren-Xu (9th month) 4711

“……over five million poor uninsured adults have incomes above Medicaid eligibility levels but below poverty and may fall into a ‘coverage gap’ of earning too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to qualify for Marketplace premium tax credits.”-The Coverage Gap: Uninsured Poor Adults in States that Do Not Expand Medicaid, Kaiser Family Foundation

The Kaiser Family Foundation is warning that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obama Care) will not provide health insurance for about 5.2 million low income adults!

That’s because Obama Care relies on states to expand Medicaid coverage to Obama Care standards, but they don’t have to because of a 2012 Supreme Court ruling.  The result is that people like me, single adults with low incomes but no dependents, will still fall into the coverage gap.

26 states are refusing to expand Medicaid: Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming and Virginia.

Note that most of those states are considered Red states.

In the Red state of Idaho, the Kaiser study estimates that 60% of “low income” adults will not be covered, and 91% of “poor” adults will not be covered!

The Kaiser study concluded: “…with many states opting not to implement the Medicaid expansion, millions of adults will remain outside the reach of the ACA and continue to have limited, if any, option for health coverage: most do not have access to employer-based coverage through a job, few can afford coverage on their own, and most are currently ineligible for public coverage in their state…..It is unlikely that people who fall into the coverage gap will be able to afford Marketplace coverage: The national average premium for a 40-year-old individual purchasing coverage through the Marketplace is $270 per month for a silver plan and $224 per month for a bronze plan, which equates to about half of income for those at the lower income range of people in the gap….people in the coverage gap are ineligible for cost-sharing subsidies for Marketplace plans and may face additional out-of-pocket costs up to $6,350 a year if they were to purchase Marketplace coverage.”

They’re talking about people like me.  Obama Care is supposed to help me how?