Medicaid

Medicaid Expansion enrollment in Louisiana reaches 400,635 new members enrolled, and the most recent Gallup report shows the uninsured rate in Louisiana has decreased by nearly half to 12.5 percent in 2016, down from 21.7 percent in 2013. Gallop cites expansion as the key contributor for the reduction in the uninsured rate.

If the goal of health policy is to keep people healthier, there is a lot of room for debate over how to go about that process. If the measurement is insurance coverage, so that medical care is more easily available and affordable, "Obamacare" is a big success.

Medicaid expansion is covering hundreds of thousands more working adults and ensuring they have access to primary care. In addition, Medicaid Expansion is bringing in more federal tax dollars to our state and saving Louisiana taxpayers $184 million.

At the national level, where there is a move to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, and in Louisiana where some officials want to end Medicaid expansion, there are critics who use the argument that Medicaid patients get worse care than those without coverage.

For all the debate about whether states should expand eligibility for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, it’s unclear whether doing so actually makes people healthier. Initial research into the impact of expansion is at the same time exhaustive and scarce, as well as seemingly contradictory in some cases.

Laypeople who come to the aid of an individual who has overdosed on heroin, morphine or other opioid drugs can now receive the lifesaving medication naloxone without having to get a direct prescription from a doctor.

Today, I’m hearing different stories. I recently spoke to a middle-aged mother who was diagnosed with cancer only because she now has coverage. Without coverage, her tumor may have been picked up too late to cure and her daughters would have grown up without their mother. I heard from a man in the Lafayette area who has sickle cell anemia. Because he now has a primary care doctor, he no longer has to go to the local emergency room several times a month for care.

The Louisiana Medicaid program is adapting its coverage guidelines for cervical cancer screening to conform to American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) guidelines.

Matthew Guidry of Opelousas, Louisiana, is one of thousands of Louisiana residents who is now getting care because of Medicaid expansion. Guidry, who has lived with sickle cell anemia almost all of his life, looked to the local emergency room for care. Although he could get relief for his pain there, it was much more difficult to find someone to treat his ongoing vision problems.