Christie: Make $6,000 a Year? You Can Afford Your Own Health Insurance

Want to know what happens if the Republican plan to end Medicaid and turn it into a block grant program to be dispersed by each state how it chooses actually happens.  You’ll get states like New Jersey, where their governor is currently cutting the eligibility for the program drastically.

Like, to people who make less than $6000 a year.

Yes, apparently if you make at least $118 a week, or more than 25 percent of the federal poverty level, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie believes you should be able to afford your own health insurance, too.  This new threshold isn’t just cutting back the number of eligible people a little — it’s literally dropping almost everyone out of the pool.

NJ.com reports:

[P]arents in a family of three earning more than $422 a month, or $5,000 a year, would be disqualified for earning too much money, according to a document summarizing the proposal. Currently the income cut-off is $24,600 for a family of three.

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who sponsored the federal law that enabled the state to create FamilyCare, an off-shoot of Medicaid for working poor families, was critical of the proposed changes.

“The state will pay a heavy price in many ways if these cuts are approved,” Pallone said Friday in a prepared statement. “The costs won’t go away. They will just be shifted to emergency rooms and uncompensated care, which we all pay for.”

Christie’s administration declares that the move, which is expected to kick over 90,000 residents off of Medicaid, is necessary in order to protect care for children, the disabled and the elderly.  But it’s not all doom and gloom.  After all, they only need to try and stay healthy for three years, and then hopefully health care reform’s public exchange will kick in and they can have medical insurance then — you know, if the Republicans haven’t repealed it by then.

Want to know what happens if the Republican plan to end Medicaid and turn it into a block grant program to be dispersed by each state how it chooses actually happens.  You’ll get states like New Jersey, where their governor is currently cutting the eligibility for the program drastically.

Like, to people who make less than $6000 a year.

Yes, apparently if you make at least $118 a week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie believes you should be able to afford your own health insurance, too.  This new threshold isn’t just cutting back the number of eligible people a little — it’s literally dropping almost everyone out of the pool.

NJ.com reports:

[P]arents in a family of three earning more than $422 a month, or $5,000 a year, would be disqualified for earning too much money, according to a document summarizing the proposal. Currently the income cut-off is $24,600 for a family of three.

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who sponsored the federal law that enabled the state to create FamilyCare, an off-shoot of Medicaid for working poor families, was critical of the proposed changes.

“The state will pay a heavy price in many ways if these cuts are approved,” Pallone said Friday in a prepared statement. “The costs won’t go away. They will just be shifted to emergency rooms and uncompensated care, which we all pay for.”

Christie’s administration declares that the move, which is expected to kick over 90,000 residents off of Medicaid, is necessary in order to protect care for children, the disabled and the elderly.  But it’s not all doom and gloom.  After all, they only need to try and stay healthy for three years, and then hopefully health care reform’s public exchange will kick in and they can have medical insurance then — you know, if the Republicans haven’t repealed it by then.

“The state is effectively telling these families to wait until 2014 to get coverage again,” U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said Friday. “Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a waiver for getting cancer.”

Thank goodness the new exchanges don’t reject people with pre-existing conditions.  Who knows how ill people will get with no health care but emergency room visits for three years.

Photo by Hoboken Condos.