Health and Suppliments

According to a report scheduled for release, the new healthcare law is not good enough to allocated enough money for covering 5.6-7.0 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions who will qualify for temporary high-risk insurance pools.

An analysis by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan research group, revealed that the $5 billion earmarked for the pools will be enough just for 200,000 individuals a year.

From NYTimes.com:

Although Medicaid is a shared state and federal expense, the federal government will pick up 95 percent of the cost of the expansion between 2014, when it takes effect, and 2019, the foundation reported. Medicaid enrollment is projected to rise by 15.9 million during that period, lowering the number of low-income uninsured by 11.2 million.

“For a relatively small investment, states could see huge returns,” said Diane Rowland, the executive vice president of the foundation.

States in the South and the West with large numbers of uninsured are projected to experience heavy growth in their Medicaid populations, with Texas and California each adding about 1.4 million people to the rolls.

The new law calls for the federal government to pick up the total cost of insuring newly eligible parents and childless adults for three years. Then the states will begin to pay some of the expense, gradually rising to 10 percent in 2020. Many governors fear that at that point the new costs will severely burden state budgets.

It was stated by the report that hundreds of thousands of potential participants with serious medical problems will be unable to obtain coverage because of the new health care law.

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