The States That Thwarted Obamacare Have Left Poor People In The Dark About The Law

BY TARA CULP-RESSLER/Think Progress

State policies designed to thwart the implementation of the Affordable Care Act have translated into fewer people getting connected with health care, suggests a new study from Harvard University researchers. Specifically, in the states where lawmakers have worked to undermine the law, poor residents are more likely to be unaware about how they could benefit from Obamacare.

The study, published this week in the Health Affairs journal, examined three red states with historically high rates of uninsurance: Kentucky, Arkansas, and Texas. Lawmakers in those states have all taken varying approaches to Obamacare implementation.

Kentucky is one of the only Southern states that wholeheartedly embraced the law. Lawmakers there agreed to expand Medicaid, created a successful state marketplace, and supported volunteer outreach efforts to teach people about how to enroll in coverage. Arkansas, meanwhile, agreed to compromise on a nontraditional Medicaid expansion and a joint federal-state marketplace, while enacting some limits on outreach efforts. Texas took the most stringent approach, refusing to expand Medicaid or set up a state marketplace while passing tough restrictions on Obamacare volunteers.

According to the Harvard researchers, those state policy decisions “appeared to have had major impacts on enrollment experiences among low-income adults.” Application and enrollment rates — as well as reports of general satisfaction with the enrollment process — were highest in Kentucky, lower in Arkansas, and lowest in Texas. And in each state, at least half of low-income residents had heard nothing about the law’s coverage expansion.

The study found that low-income Americans’ success in signing up for Obamacare had a lot to do with whether they had adequate help navigating the enrollment process, which was plagued with technological glitches when Obamacare’s marketplaces first launched. The participants who received enrollment assistance from so-called “navigators,” the volunteers tasked with helping uninsured people sign up for new plans, were nearly 10 percentage points more likely to successfully get connected with coverage under the law.

But not every state has provided that assistance. Over the past several years, placing restrictions on navigators has emerged as one of the most popular state-level tactics to undermine Obamacare. In at least 17 states across the country, GOP lawmakers have enacted legislative barriers that make it harder for navigators to do their jobs. When these state laws first started emerging in 2013, consumer advocates warned they would translate into fewer people receiving the proper education about the brand-new health care reform law — ultimately suppressing enrollment among the population that could benefit from Obamacare the most.

Two years later, the new study provides some evidence that this situation is unfolding exactly as predicted.

“Navigators and application assistance programs appear to be a valuable approach to improving the effectiveness of the coverage expansion, and states enacting restrictions on these programs are likely harming their low-income residents’ ability to obtain coverage,” the Harvard researchersconclude.

“It’s definitely been an uphill battle,” Mimi Garcia, the Texas director for Enroll America, a group aligned with the White House that has focused on helping Americans sign up for Obamacare, told Kaiser Health News this week. She pointed out that, even if navigators are able to get around the state-imposed restrictions that stifle their volunteer efforts, they still have to contend withmisconceptions about the law stemming from the state lawmakers who bash Obamacare.

Anti-Obamacare politicians have rarely been candid about the fact that, on a practical level, their opposition to the law translates into fewer people getting access to health care. But, when it comes to state-level restrictions on education and enrollment campaigns, there certainly appears to be a correlation. Previous studies have found that patients are less likely to get accurate information about Obamacare in states where the governor opposes the law.

“The prospect that millions of Americans will soon gain affordable health coverage is so threatening to Obamacare opponents that they are now persisting in unprecedented obstruction of the law,” Ron Pollack, the president of Families USA, an organization that supports the Affordable Care Act, told the Washington Post back in 2013. And that effort has been pretty successful.

60 Faith Leaders Sign Letter Telling GOP Not To Raise Taxes On 24 Million Americans

By Travis Waldron/think progress
A coalition of faith leaders released a letter ahead of yesterday’s symbolic House tax vote telling Republicans not to allow the expiration of two tax credits that, together, would raise taxes on more than 15 million Americans. In the letter, the faith leaders called for extensions of the 2009 expansions of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, two provisions Republicans allow to expire in the bill they approved.

The GOP’s plan to let the expanded tax credits expire, the letter said, was “simply unconscionable“:

These tax credits help families meet basic needs, reduce poverty, and remove barriers to work. It is hypocritical for lawmakers who talk about family values to abandon improvements in these effective, family-supporting programs. Failing to extend the improved tax credits would jeopardize the economic security and well-being of more than 15 million families and more than 36 million children within those families. This is simply unconscionable.

As ThinkProgress has noted, the GOP would also allow for the expiration of the American Opportunity Tax Credit, a tax break on college tuition payments that would affect roughly 11 million families. In total, the expiration of all three tax credits would raise taxes on 24 million Americans, 10 times the number that would see a tax increase under the Democratic plan to allow only the Bush tax cuts on higher incomes to expire.

This isn’t the first time that faith leaders have criticized Republican policies. An assortment of faith leaders panned the House GOP’s budget, calling it an “immoral disaster” that “robs the poor.” This summer, Sister Simone Campbell, one of this letter’s signers, led the Nuns On A Bus tour across the country to protest GOP’s cuts to programs that help the poor and middle class.

Cantor Suggests Raising Taxes On The Poor: ‘You’ve Got To Discuss That Issue’

By Travis Waldron/Think Progress

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) revived one of the GOP’s favorite talking points this morning, telling attendees at a Politico-sponsored breakfast event that it was imperative that Congress address the “problem” that “more than 45 percent” of Americans aren’t paying income taxes.

The GOP has repeatedly made the claim that the poorest Americans need more “skin in the game.” Today, response to a question by ABC’s Jon Karl, Cantor made it clear that Republicans are interested in raising taxes on the poor while lowering tax rates for everyone else as part of any comprehensive tax reform plan:

CANTOR: We also know that over 45 percent of the people in this country don’t pay income taxes at all, and we have to question whether that’s fair. And should we broaden the base in a way that we can lower the rates for everybody that pays taxes. [...]

KARL: Just wondering, what do you do about that? Are you saying we need to have a tax increase on the 45 percent who right now pay no federal income tax?

CANTOR: I’m saying that, just in a macro way of looking at it, you’ve got to discuss that issue. … How do you deal with a shrinking pie and number of people and entities that support the operations of government, and how do you go about continuing to milk them more, if that’s what some want to do, but preserve their ability to provide the growth engine? … I’ve never believed that you go raise taxes on those that have been successful that are paying in, taking away from them, so that you just hand out and give to someone else.

Watch Cantor’s full answer here:

ThinkProgress has repeatedly explained why many Americans don’t pay income taxes — most either don’t make enough money or are college students or seniors with no yearly incomes. And those Americans are subject to various other forms of taxation, including the federal payroll tax.

The richest Americans, meanwhile, have seen their tax rates fall even as their incomes skyrocketed, contributing to rising inequality and exploding federal deficits. As Cantor made plain today, though, none of that matters. In addition to making the poor and middle classshoulder the burden of draconian budget cuts, Republicans want to raise their taxes too.