By CAP Action War Room

After Overseeing The Largest Expansion Of Health Care In 50 Years, Sebelius Steps Down

News broke last night that Kathleen Sebelius is stepping down from her role as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Sebelius served at HHS for 5 years, working to help pass the Affordable Care Act and oversee its implementation through the first open enrollment period. President Obama has nominated Sylvia Matthews Burwell, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, to fill the post (learn more about her here).

Sebelius stepping down is a clear sign that Obamacare has won. As President Obama said: while “we lost the first quarter of open enrollment period with the problems with HealthCare.gov,” Sebelius and her “team at HHS turned the corner, got it fixed, got the job done, and the final score speaks for itself.”

That score?

• 7.5 million: The (newly updated) number of private signups on the exchange during open enrollment, beating even the rosier predictions.
• 3 million: The number of young people who now have health insurance because they are able to stay on their parents’ health plans.
• 3 million: The number of new low-income adults and children who have enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
• 9.3 million: The net gain in the number of American adults with health insurance coverage from September 2013 to mid-March 2014, according to the most recent study.

Beyond overseeing this historic expansion in health care for millions of Americans, perhaps Sebelius’s biggest accomplishment is the one no one is talking about: her ability to work across the aisle to convince numerous Republican lawmakers in bright red states to extend health care coverage to lower-income working Americans. Sebelius came to HHS from being a Democratic governor in the very Republican state of Kansas, and her track record of problem-solving and bipartisanship, which was often obscured in the highly politicized debate over the ACA, proved essential in this regard.

Health care writer Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic considered Sebelius’s legacy in the context of her work getting GOP-led states to expand Medicaid:

Authorities from one of those states, Ohio, reported on Thursday that more than 100,000 low-income residents were getting coverage through the state’s expanded Medicaid. The announcement came just hours before the news about Sebelius’ resignation broke—and the juxtaposition seems fitting. The memories of Obamacare’s difficult start will certainly linger. But to the millions of people around the country who now have access to affordable medical care, I’m not sure that really matters.

BOTTOM LINE: After serving as a cabinet official for 1,809 days; giving hundreds of interviews and taking dozens of trips to promote the ACA; and bouncing back from a difficult open enrollment roll-out to oversee millions of Americans get access to affordable coverage, Sebelius deserves not ire but thanks. The fight to defend and improve law will continue. But for now: thanks, Kathleen.

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By CAP Action War Room

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A 32-Year-Old Woman Is Dead Because Of Political Games

Charlene Dill, with her son

CREDIT: GoFundMe

In too many states, Republican lawmakers are refusing to provide health coverage to millions of Americans through the Medicaid program simply because of politics. These political games have real consequences.

The debate over whether to accept or not accept federal funding to provide health insurance often deals with a lot of charts and numbers. But today, sadly, this debate has a name: Charlene Dill. Dill, a 32-year-old working mom with three small children, died recently because she didn’t have access to the care she needed. She worked three part-time jobs to stay afloat, earning an estimated $9,000 per year. Because this was more than the $6,809 limit to qualify for Medicaid in Florida, she fell into the coverage gap.

Reporter Billy Manes at the Orlando Weekly tells the story:

Dill’s death was not unpredictable, nor was it unpreventable. She had a documented heart condition for which she took medication. But she also happened to be one of the people who fall within the gap created by the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, which was a key part of the Affordable Care Act’s intention to make health care available to everyone. In the ensuing two years, 23 states have refused to expand Medicaid, including Florida, which rejected $51 billion from the federal government over the period of a decade to overhaul its Medicaid program to include people like Dill and [her best friend Kathleen Voss] Woolrich – people who work, but do not make enough money to qualify for the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies. They, like many, are victims of a political war – one that puts the lives and health of up to 17,000 U.S. residents and 2,000 Floridians annually in jeopardy, all in the name of rebelling against President Barack Obama’s health care plan.

Indeed, Charlene Dill will not be the only one who dies because she lacked access to care due to the coverage gap. A recent study found that up to 2,200 Floridians — and 17,000 Americans overall — will die directly as a result of their states refusing to accept the federal funding to expand health care for their residents. The study also estimates that nationwide, individuals with “catastrophic medical expenditures” as a result of being in the coverage gap will number around 240,000 people.

If Florida did accept the nearly $5.2 billion in federal funding to expand health care, it has been projected to increase economic activity by $8.9 billion through 2016 and create approximately 71,300 new jobs in the state.

Kathleen Voss Woolrich, Dill’s best friend who had turned to crowdfunding websites to raise money to pay for Dill’s heart medication and then, tragically, to pay for her friend’s funeral, wrote:

You see the main argument Republicans use is that it’s some lazy person who needs Medicaid expansion. That those of us living without healthcare or dental care are lazy. But my friend, a single beautiful mother, worked three jobs. I am burying my best friend because of the policies of the Republican Party. I am burying my best friend because had Medicaid expanded, her needs would have been met.

BOTTOM LINE: Conservative legislators who have continued to refuse federal funding to expand health care for their citizens must realize that political decisions have real consequences. A 32-year-old woman who could not afford her heart medication because she fell into the medicaid coverage gap is now dead. It’s time we put an end to avoidable — but now permanent — consequences like this one.