PPACA spreads the wealth around

(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

The Upshot at the New York Times has a terrific set of graphs and charts on the Affordable Care Act that explains something important: In the real world, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is more or less doing what it was supposed to do. About 10 million more people have insurance now than a year ago (and this doesn’t count young people newly added to their parents’ insurance).

The takeaway is just how big a deal Medicaid expansion is — and what the consequences are of delaying it, thanks to the Supreme Court decision giving states the ability to opt out and the willingness of some Republican governors to do so. This is seen most easily in a map of which counties have the most uninsured now, and the relatively low levels of uninsured in (expansion-accepting) Kentucky right between higher levels in (expansion-rejecting) Indiana and Tennessee.