Discrimination in Medicaid, from ObamaCare..... SCOTUS, Approved ObamaCare and Gave States Option to accept Medicaid.... Legal Immigrants get Covered and Citizens Don't, in States that turn down Medicaid

Immigration fallout from saying no to 'Obamacare'
Excerpts from Article Below....Full Read in Link Below....

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

Associated Press / January 23, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — Governors who reject health insurance for the poor under the federal health care overhaul could wind up in a politically awkward position on immigration: A quirk in the law means some U.S. citizens would be forced to go without coverage, while legal immigrants residing in the same state could still get it.

It’s an unintended consequence of how last year’s Supreme Court decision changed the Medicaid provisions of President Barack Obama’s health care law. The overhaul expanded the federal-state program for low-income and disabled people. The Supreme Court made the Medicaid expansion optional for states, which complicated things.

The quirk in the Affordable Care Act was not planned. It came about on the twisting route that laws follow from Congress to the president’s desk and to the courts.

To be sure, no one is talking about the government buying health insurance for illegal immigrants. That’s not allowed under Medicaid or Obama’s law. Instead, the issue here is between U.S. citizens and legal immigrants, those who are lawfully present in the country.

Here’s the convoluted background:

Starting Jan. 1, 2014, the health care law will offer health insurance to millions of people now uninsured. Middle-class uninsured people will be able to get taxpayer-subsidized private policies through new markets called exchanges. Low-income uninsured people will be steered to Medicaid, a government program jointly funded by Washington and the states.

Under previous laws, legal immigrants have to wait five years to qualify for Medicaid. Ng'andu said Hispanic advocacy groups wanted to lift that restriction during the 2009 congressional health care debate, but couldn’t get political support. The Medicaid waiting period remained in place, but a compromise was reached that would allow low-income legal immigrants to get subsidized private coverage in the new health insurance exchanges.

The health care law expanded Medicaid to cover millions of low-income adults who are ineligible under current rules. As written, the law assumed that every state would accept the Medicaid expansion, with Washington paying for most of it. So the law stipulated that people below the federal poverty line — $11, 170 for a single person, $23,050 for a family of four— could not get subsidies for private coverage in the exchanges. Medicaid was to be their only option.

Legal immigrants here for less than five years remained an exception.

Along came the Supreme Court. It upheld Obama’s law, but ruled that states were free to accept or reject the Medicaid expansion. The court did not touch the issue of coverage for legal immigrants in the health insurance exchanges. That provision remained in place.

And that’s how the immigration glitch came to be. Poor people in a state that turns down Obama’s Medicaid expansion can only get government subsidized coverage if they are legal immigrants. U.S. citizens are out of luck.Continued...

Read Full Article.......
http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/2013/01/23/immigrat...
http://www.live5news.com/story/20660753/immigration-fallout-f...
http://www.wxow.com/story/20660753/immigration-fallout-from-s...
http://www3.wdtn.com/dpps/news/politics/whitehouse/immigratio...
http://www.ktiv.com/story/20660753/immigration-fallout-from-s...