more reason to smile about socialized medicine:
States Refusing To Expand Medicaid Will Forfeit More Than $400 Billion Over The Next Decade | ThinkProgress
If the 24 states that have refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare don’t change that stance, they’ll lose out on about $420 billion dollars in federal funding between 2013 and 2022, according to new research from the Urban Institute. The hospitals located in those states will also miss out on a projected $167.8 billion boost from the patients who could have become insured through expansion.
The health reform law, which was designed with a national Medicaid expansion in mind, specifically allocates additional funding to finance the cost of adding more people to states’ Medicaid rolls. But since the Supreme Court ruled the expansion to be optional, only half the country is actually implementing this particular provision. Health officials were initially optimistic that the “unusually generous” federal funds would help encourage resistant lawmakers to expand Medicaid; however, that hasn’t turned out to be the case for many GOP-controlled states.
Many politicians have cited financial concerns to justify their decision to reject expansion, saying that it’s irresponsible to pour more money into an inefficient government program. But since the federal government will foot more than 90 percent of the costs of the Medicaid expansion over its first nine years, the new report finds that about $13.41 in federal dollars will flow into states for every $1 they spend on Medicaid.
States Refusing To Expand Medicaid Will Forfeit More Than $400 Billion Over The Next Decade | ThinkProgress
If the 24 states that have refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare don’t change that stance, they’ll lose out on about $420 billion dollars in federal funding between 2013 and 2022, according to new research from the Urban Institute. The hospitals located in those states will also miss out on a projected $167.8 billion boost from the patients who could have become insured through expansion.
The health reform law, which was designed with a national Medicaid expansion in mind, specifically allocates additional funding to finance the cost of adding more people to states’ Medicaid rolls. But since the Supreme Court ruled the expansion to be optional, only half the country is actually implementing this particular provision. Health officials were initially optimistic that the “unusually generous” federal funds would help encourage resistant lawmakers to expand Medicaid; however, that hasn’t turned out to be the case for many GOP-controlled states.
Many politicians have cited financial concerns to justify their decision to reject expansion, saying that it’s irresponsible to pour more money into an inefficient government program. But since the federal government will foot more than 90 percent of the costs of the Medicaid expansion over its first nine years, the new report finds that about $13.41 in federal dollars will flow into states for every $1 they spend on Medicaid.
