With the official end of the COVID-19 health emergency, Louisiana is expected to begin dropping hundreds of thousands of people from Medicaid rolls later this year.
Uncompensated care for the uninsured costs providers and taxpayers billions, and not having a relationship with a primary care doctor tends to produce worse health outcomes. About 20% of Louisiana residents were uninsured 10 years ago, compared to about 4% now, says Michael Bertaut, health care economist with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, and no one wants to see the state’s uninsured ranks swell again.
“We don’t want to revert back to the time when everybody used the emergency room as their primary source of care,” Bertaut told the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge today.
COVID-19 protections that allowed many people to qualify for Medicaid who ordinarily would not because they made too much money are ending. Bertaut says Blue Cross has been putting a lot of time and effort into getting the word out in hopes of helping those people reestablish their eligibility or make a smooth transition to a plan available at HealthCare.gov, the federally subsidized marketplace.
The federal government has fixed the “family glitch” that prevented spouses and dependents from getting subsidized individual health insurance policies if an employer offered coverage to an employee in their family, Bertaut also explained. He says many business owners have responded by partnering with an agent to help those family members find coverage in the federal marketplace that the employer doesn’t have to pay for.
“Boy, is the individual market about to get really big,” he says. “And that’s something we’re planning for.”
Bertaut also noted that a recent federal court decision striking an Affordable Care Act provision requiring zero-dollar co-pay coverage of 53 preventive health services is being appealed, so he doesn’t expect any insurer to roll back coverage this year.
