Missouri Chamber Endorses Bill Expanding Medicaid To Low-Income Workers

[Sherman A1]

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce is lauding a new proposal to expand Medicaid. The business group says it would allow Missouri to take advantage of the $2 billion a year in federal subsidies that it currently has declined to accept.

The chamber says the proposal, filed by state Rep. Noel Torpey, R-Independence, would increase the state’s eligibility standards for Medicaid to cover working adults who earn less than the federal poverty level, which is now $11,670 a year for a single person. Missouri currently provides Medicaid coverage only to adults who earn no more than 19 percent of the federal poverty level.

“We urge lawmakers to consider this legislation, not only for the thousands of additional Missourians that we would be able to help by securing billions in federal funding,” said Missouri Chamber President/CEO Daniel P. Mehan in a statement. “But also to help us keep the doors open in the health-care facilities of our rural and urban communities, which, quite frankly, have been put in jeopardy" by the Affordable Care Act.

Mehan noted that the Affordable Care Act recommends that states expand Medicaid to all Americans earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Under the act, the federal government pays all the expansion costs for the first three years and at least 90 percent thereafter.

http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/missouri-chamber-endorses-bill-expanding-medicaid-low-income-workers

[marble falls]

1. ACA works. Single payer will work better.