
The Americans dying because they can't afford medical care - elorant
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/07/americans-healthcare-medical-costs
======
asdfasgasdgasdg
I don't fully understand why the anecdote at the beginning of the story
happened. Colorado is one of the states that expanded Medicaid. Why did the
person in question not get on Medicaid during the window after she lost her
job at Walmart? Did she not know about it? Do I not have a correct
understanding of how the ACA and Medicaid work?

~~~
Miner49er
Is this type of thing common knowledge? Laws and benefits change all the time.
It's entirely possible she didn't know.

Also, the way it works is on annual income. If she had already earned greater
then 138% of poverty level that year, she wouldn't have been eligible.

If she was less then 400% on the year and greater then 138%, she would be
eligible for an exchange plan that is subsidized, but she would've been on
hook for the some or all of the subsidies when paying taxes if she ended up
getting a new job.

It also depends on the kind of insurance she lost. If it was a non-exchange
individual plan, she wasn't even eligible for the subsidized exchange plan.

Source: [https://www.healthinsurancecolorado.net/lost-job-apply-
for-m...](https://www.healthinsurancecolorado.net/lost-job-apply-for-medicaid-
asap/)

~~~
bloopernova
What you've described is already too complicated, and serves as a barrier to
entry. Kind of like purging voters and making people check every month to make
sure they're still a "real voter".

This is one of many reasons why we need automatic voter registration, and
single-payer healthcare.

