ACA Medicaid Expansion Cuts Medical Debt Nearly in Half

Vox.com: “Medicaid expansion doesn’t just provide more people health insurance — it appears to cut medical debt enormously, a new study has found. The Affordable Care Act offered states a huge infusion of federal money to expand Medicaid eligibility to low-income adults, and about 30 states took that deal right away in 2014. Since then, new medical debt in those states has fallen 44 percent, a dramatically bigger drop than was seen in the states that refused to expand the program over the same period. Those states showed only a 10 percent decline.”

Missouri Doctor: Locals Getting Vaccinated in Secret to Avoid Harassment

CNN: “The Covid-19 vaccine has become so polarizing that some people in Missouri are getting inoculated in secret for fear of backlash from their friends and family who oppose vaccination, a doctor told CNN on Wednesday.

“‘They’ve had some experience that’s sort of changed their mind from the viewpoint of those in their family, those in their friendship circles or their work circles. And they came to their own decision that they wanted to get a vaccine,’ said Dr. Priscilla Frase, a hospitalist and chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Missouri. ‘They did their own research on it, and they talked to people and made the decisions themselves,’ Frase told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. ‘But even though they were able to make that decision themselves, they didn’t want to have to deal with the peer pressure or the outbursts from other people about them … ‘giving in to everything.'”

Congressional Conserva-Dems Put Democracy at Risk

“[Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten] Sinema seems not to care that her own state is flooding, the West is burning, and infrastructure around the country is crumbling. Sinema is more interested in gaining GOP friends and blocking much needed resources than fighting for her residents’ future. Time for the White House to play hardball. We didn’t elect Sinema as president and we won’t let her obstruction put a Republican in the Oval Office in 2024. It’s the reconciliation bill or GOP controlling every level of government again, period.”

– Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-MI.