Right there with them
As many as a half-million Texans could become uninsured under the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, wiping out at least half the gains the state has made in reducing the number of uninsured residents in recent years, according to health care analysts.
Texas still has the nation’s highest percentage of people without health insurance, but that uninsured rate has dropped significantly, falling to about 19 percent from 26 percent over the past four years. About 1 million more Texans gained coverage under the health care overhaul known as Obamacare, which became law in 2010.
Under the Republican plan to repeal and replace the health care law, 500,000 could lose coverage by 2020, either through changes in federal assistance to purchase coverage and Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, or the end of individual mandates that require people to have insurance, said Ken Janda, president and CEO of Community Health Choice whose company offers insurance plans on the federal exchanges.
Analysts such as Vivian Ho, health economist at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, advocates like Elena Marks, CEO of Houston’s Episcopal Health Foundation, and insurers, such as Molina Healthcare, confirmed Janda’s estimates.
“Certainly, Texas is going to have more uninsured people again,” Janda said. “I don’t see much positive coming out of Congress.”
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Dr. Mario Molina, CEO of the California-based Molina Healthcare, a Fortune 500 company, said in an interview he cannot yet commit that his company will be in the Texas market next year on the exchange because of the uncertainty that currently exists surrounding the promise to repeal and replace the ACA. Currently his company is one of only three insurers who offer ACA coverage in Houston.
“I am very nervous,” he said. “There is little that Congress has done so far that indicates the insurance market will be stable.”
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, which offers plans on the exchange in every Texas county, including Harris, also expressed concerns about the uncertainty of federal health care policy.
“It’s imperative that we have market stability and regulatory certainty,” the company said in an emailed statement. “We will make decisions about our product offerings for 2018 once we have more information about any legislative or regulatory changes that will be made impacting the individual health insurance markets.
Health care providers, meanwhile, worry what will happen if hundreds of thousands of Texas residents lose insurance. Katy Caldwell, executive director of Houston’s Legacy Community Health, which serves many low-income patients, said fewer insured patients will mean longer wait times as clinic staff become overwhelmed. But a jump in the uninsured rate would create more than inconvenience, she said.
“The thing that really concerns me is people foregoing their medication. I hear it all the time now: ‘I have to choose between food and my medicine’ or ‘I cut my pill in half because I can make a 30-day supply last 60 days,'” Caldwell said. “This has every potential to get worse.”
Honestly, I think that half million estimate is very much on the low end, possibly the optimal scenario under the Ryan bill, which to be sure has no obvious path forward at this time. The provision that would not only freeze Medicaid enrollments but prevent anyone who fails to re-enroll for any reason from ever re-enrolling would surely force many more people off, just as the six-month re-enrollment period for CHIP that was passed by the 2003 Legislature contributed to so many more children going without health insurance. And all that is before we consider the possible chaos in the broader healthcare market. So yeah, if a few years from now we come out of this with only a half million people having lost coverage, I’d consider that to be better than I expected.