We begin today’s roundup with Paul Krugman at The New York Times and his analysis of how Democrats should continue to focus on health care, especially at the state level:
[J]ust by capturing the House Democrats achieved one big goal — taking repeal of the Affordable Care Act off the table. True, the G.O.P. lawsuit against the act’s protection of pre-existing conditions is still awaiting a ruling — the long silence of the Republican-leaning judge in that case is getting increasingly strange. But there won’t be any more legislative attempts to dismantle the law. [...]
the importance of state-level action has only increased in the past two years, as the Trump administration and its congressional allies, unable to fully repeal the A.C.A., have nonetheless done all they can to sabotage it. They eliminated the individual mandate, which pushed people to sign up while they were still healthy; they eliminated reinsurance that helped insurance companies manage their own risk; they cut back drastically on outreach.
All of these measures acted to drive premiums up and enrollment down. But states can, if they choose, fill the Trump-size hole.
Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post explains why Medicaid work requirement experiments have failed:
As noted in an earlier column, Arkansas’s first-in-the-country, first-in-history Medicaid work requirements have been backfiring.
The state has already purged 12,000 from the Medicaid rolls over the past three months. These Arkansans are not necessarily being booted because they’re failing to work, however. Some have lost their insurance because the state has made it so ridiculously complicated for them to prove they’re working.
Then, perversely, getting kicked off insurance can also make it harder for poor Arkansans to keep their jobs. Some people — such as Adrian McGonigal, a Medicaid recipient with a severe lung disease — need medication and other care in order to be productive, healthy workers.