Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or ‘Obamacare’ was the expansion of Medicaid program across the states. Charles Barrilleaux and Carlisle Rainey look at why state government have opted out of the Medicaid expansion. They find that Obama’s 2012 vote share and the governor’s partisanship better explains the disapproval to Medicaid expansion, rather than measures of need, such as life expectancy or the number of people that are uninsured. Charles Barrilleaux and Carlisle Rainey find that a Republican governor is a higher percentage point more likely to oppose the expansion than Democratic governors. Whereas, the results show that the percentage uninsured in the state to have a small positive effect on the probability of opposition. …show more content…
While this estimate is not really certain, the data strongly suggest that partisanship has a larger effect than need. In conclusion, the results reveal that partisan politics, not citizen need, explain governors’ decisions whether or not to accept the Obamacare Medicaid expansions as offered under the Affordable Care Act. Governors who do not expand Medicaid are doing so because of political belief, and the evidence suggests that those beliefs are not consistent with public preferences or public need. A case in the US Supreme court where petitioners claim health care subsidies are only given to people who live in states that have their own health exchanges. If the Court rules in favor of the petitioners, this will lead to the downfall of the ACA in states that do not establish exchanges (which includes all of the non-Medicaid adopters as well as others that opted to use the federal exchange) and will lead to a separated system of health benefits in the United