NOTE: Minnesota will be redistricted after this year’s census. This is decided by the Minnesota Legislature. The state Republican Party in states they control have used gerrymandering to increase their representation. Please pay attention, stay engaged and help stop this from happening in Minnesota.
More than a dozen states are denying their own residents expanded access to Medicaid, despite the fact that the federal government would pay for nearly the entire cost under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Medicaid plays a critical role in Americans’ access to health care, paying for half of all births in the United States,1 providing resources to combat the opioid epidemic, and helping keep rural hospitals financially afloat. Evidence shows that in states that have implemented the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, low-income populations have benefited from not only better access to care but also greater financial stability, fewer evictions, and lower poverty rates.2
While Medicaid enjoys strong public support, officials in a handful of states are refusing to act in the interests of their own citizens. Many of these states have failed to expand Medicaid because of partisan gerrymandering—the practice of drawing district lines to unfairly favor particular politicians or political parties.3 By gerrymandering their districts, politicians can stay in power—and keep their political parties in power—even if they lose voter support. And that means that on issues such as the expansion of Medicaid, conservative politicians can cater to the extreme right wing and oppose policies that would save lives at minimal cost to state taxpayers.
The cost of this distortion is high. In North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Georgia—three states that have not expanded Medicaid—1 million more people would have been insured and roughly 3,000 deaths would have been prevented in 2019 alone if the expansion had been fully implemented. In Michigan—another state with heavily gerrymandered districts—conservatives in control of the Legislature have attempted to limit beneficiaries’ access to Medicaid through the imposition of burdensome work requirements. Evidence shows, however, that Medicaid work requirements not only result in low-income people losing health coverage but also fail at their purported objective of boosting employment. Continue reading.