Reuters Money

Republicans are trying to strangle healthcare reform in its crib, but it won’t be infants who suffer most if they succeed.

Baby boomers have an enormous stake in healthcare reform. They’re old enough to have chronic conditions, too young for Medicare — and they’re losing their insurance at an alarming rate.

The number of Americans without health insurance age 50 to 64 grew by 1.1 million in 2009, according to a report by The Commonwealth Fund, a foundation focused on healthcare affordability and access issues. The report found that 8.6 million Americans in that age group were uninsured last year—15 percent of the total. Meanwhile, another 9.7 million in this age group had coverage with such high deductibles that they were considered “effectively underinsured,” according to the study.

While data isn’t available yet for 2010, “the trends suggest it got worse this year,” according to Sara Collins, Commonwealth’s vice president for affordable health insurance.

The main culprit is unemployment, and the subsequent loss of employer-sponsored coverage. About 2.2 million Americans over age 55 were jobless in November. And nearly two-thirds of older Americans have at least one chronic health condition, which means unemployment also poses serious problems with healthcare.

That financial stress is reflected in recent data on the rising rate of bankruptcy filings due to medical issues, with filings by people over age 55 rising much faster than younger age groups.

The Commonwealth Fund study found that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will bring dramatic relief by 2014, when implementation of the new law is to be completed. Of those 8.6 million uncovered adults, 6.8 million will gain subsidized coverage–3.3 million through an expanded Medicaid program, and 3.5 million through the new private insurance exchanges that will be created in each state.

The ACA expands Medicaid eligibility to cover all adults with incomes below 133 percent of the federal poverty level, starting in 2014. “The Medicaid expansion is significant,” Collins said. “It’s nearly all federally financed, so it will mean a huge injection of cash into state budgets. And for people who meet the income definitions, the care is 100 percent subsidized.”

As a transitional measure, new high-risk insurance pools were this year for people who had been without insurance for at least six months and had pre-existing conditions that made it hard for them to gain coverage. Twenty-seven states formed their own pre-existing condition pools, and the federal government offered a program in states that didn’t form their own plans.

The federal plan will be enhanced in 2011. You can check on coverage available in your state at this page on the federal government’s health care reform website.

Meanwhile, starting in 2014, insurance companies won’t be able to turn away people with pre-existing conditions, or to charge sick people higher premiums. And the new public insurance exchanges will come online.

Republicans are challenging ACA’s constitutionality in the courts, and are working to withhold funding for implementation at every turn. It’s impossible to know at this juncture where those efforts will go. But it’s clear Americans over age 50 ought to be rooting for the new law to succeed.