Texas
An eye-popping detail from Michael Luo’s NYT article on the ACA’s effect on state Medicaid budgets:
Texas, which has some of the most restrictive Medicaid eligibility rules in the country for adults, currently covers working parents only if they do not earn more than roughly 20 percent of the federal poverty level. The program does not cover childless adults.
He mentions in the preceding paragraph that the federal poverty level for a family of four is $29,300. 20% of that is $5,860 per year.
So while Obamacare winds up subsidizing states like Massachusetts which have done a good job keeping people from going uninsured, it’s administering a richly deserved beatdown to states like Texas, Arizona, and California which prefer letting people die in the streets to hiking taxes by a nickel. Good for Obamacare.
