WASHINGTON (AP) — Having health insurance used to hinge on where you worked and what your medical history said. Soon that won't matter, with open-access markets for subsidized coverage coming Oct. 1 under President Barack Obama's overhaul.
But there's a new wild card, something that didn't seem so critical when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act back in 2010: where you live.
Entrenched political divisions over "Obamacare," have driven most Republican-led states to turn their backs on the biggest expansion of the social safety net in a half century. If you're uninsured in a state that's opposed, you may not get much help picking the right private health plan for your budget and your family's needs.
The differences will be more glaring if you're poor and your state rejected the law's Medicaid expansion. Unless leaders reverse course, odds are you'll remain uninsured. That's because people below the poverty line do not qualify for subsidies to buy coverage in the markets.