Floyd said a social worker at North Mississippi Medical Center helped arrange for free treatments - surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.
He waited a year, then saw a doctor, who told him he had Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. But just as he was learning to walk with a prosthesis, he said, he noticed a lump in his neck. Floyd turned to singing and playing drums for a living, performing gigs with his cover band, Proximity Rule. Unable to work after the loss of his leg, Mr. Floyd free private insurance - but only for four years. The social policy bill would close the so-called Medicaid coverage gap by offering an estimated 2.2 million low-income adults like Mr. He lives in one of 12 states where Republicans have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, citing the cost, of which states would eventually pay 10 percent. Floyd learned he had diabetic ulcers, the infection had spread to his bones, leaving him no choice but to have his leg amputated from the knee down. A doctor treated the wound, but it festered for five years. The rock caused a sore on his right foot.
Floyd from feeling a rock that had slipped into his boot while working. “If you are having to pay $60 out of pocket, you go, ‘Well, it’s not exactly right, but it’s not stopping me from doing anything, so I’m going to just keep on pushing,’” Mr. The legislation would also expand coverage for children, by permanently funding the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers 10 million low- and middle-income children, and by making it harder for children to lose Medicaid coverage because of paperwork errors or fluctuating family income. The Century Foundation estimates the provision would extend coverage to about one million women over the next decade.
The social policy bill would provide Medicaid to new mothers for a full year after delivery instead of just two months, allowing more time to address postpartum medical issues that can surface later. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world, and about 12 percent of such deaths happen more than six weeks after delivery. Researchers say this is an especially problematic time for women to lose health insurance, when they are still at high risk of postpartum complications. Here are some of the programs - and people - the legislation would affect.īut while Medicaid has become a major source of health coverage during pregnancy - about 40 percent of the country’s babies are born to mothers who receive the coverage - it ends 60 days after delivery. Many of the remaining uninsured would be eligible for expanded Obamacare subsidies or Medicaid, but are not expected to sign up.
But that balance is slightly misleading: The parts that save money are designed as permanent, while several new coverage provisions would expire after 2025.Įven with the changes, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that more than 27 million people would remain uninsured, including many undocumented immigrants, whom the bill does not assist. Pearson said, the legislation “is one of the biggest steps toward patching the holes” in the system.Īs a group, the health care provisions will cost $330 billion over the next decade and come with compensating health savings of $325 billion, according to an analysis of Congressional Budget Office data by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. If the measure passes, the United States will retain its patchwork system, where people obtain different health coverage depending on where they live, what they earn, where they work and how old they are.Įven so, Ms.