Subscribe to Receive the Daily Report

Friday, October 30th, 2015

Cosmic Irony: States That Didn’t Expand Medicaid Paying More For The Program

Author:     Tierney Sneed
Source:     TPM
Publication Date:     October 20, 2015, 6:00 AM EDT
 Link: Cosmic Irony: States That Didn’t Expand Medicaid Paying More For The Program
Stephan:   Here is some good news. We have solid data that Right's policies produce decreased wellness.   Here, in contrast is some actual data showing how wellness oriented policies deliver better outcomes by being more compassionate and life affirming. Note that states that accepted ACA also saw improvements in costs, and with benefits in other areas as well. Programs that produce wellness are always cheaper, more efficient, and more effective because money is not being siphoned off to serve special interests and the inherent structure is not distorted in the service of that end.
President Barack Obama Credit: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

President Barack Obama
Credit: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

States that refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are now paying the price, literally.

A new Kaiser Family Foundation report released last week suggests that the Republican-controlled non-expansion states are seeing their share of Medicaid costs rise more sharply than expansion states. (emphasis added)

The trend undercuts a popular argument against the Medicaid expansion in states where Republican leaders continue to resist opting into the program, under which the federal government pays 100 percent of costs through 2016 and at least 90 percent share after.

“We did see a higher growth rate of what states spent of their own dollars on Medicaid in the in non-expansion states than we did in the expansion states” said Laura Snyder, a senior policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation. The report found that total spending in expansion states grew by 17.7 percent, but the state spending only grew by 3.4 percent. Meanwhile, state spending on Medicaid in non-expansion states increased by 6.9 […]

Read the Full Article