The coronavirus outbreak is now burning primarily through states with the highest share of uninsured residents, complicating the local response and amplifying the political debate over the future of the Affordable Care Act. Caseloads are exploding in many of the 13 remaining states where Republican governors, legislators or both have refused to expand eligibility for Medicaid under the law, a list that includes Texas, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. …
The new pressures emerging as the virus migrates to low-insurance Sun Belt states — after striking first primarily in Northern and Western states that expanded Medicaid, almost all of which have lower uninsured rates than the national average — is only one of the several respects in which the outbreak is raising the stakes in the debate over the ACA’s future. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, CNN