Good? Bad? It depends on your point of view I guess, but there should be no debate it is expensive. And the crazy way we did this leaving it to the states puts many low-income Americans in a coverage gap not eligible for Medicaid or a Obamacare exchange, which excludes people eligible under the new rules for Medicaid even if their state did not expand Medicaid. Now isn’t that smart?😜
And then there is the usually conundrum; keep expanding entitlements instead of working to make them not necessary and further trapping more people. In this case you try to earn more and you lose your health care coverage.
Medicaid enrollment under Obamacare is skyrocketing past expectations, giving some GOP governors who oppose the program’s expansion under the health law an “I told you so” moment.
More than 12 million people have signed up for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act since January 2014, and in some states that embraced that piece of the law, enrollment is hundreds of thousands beyond initial projections. Seven states have seen particularly big surges, with their overruns totaling nearly 1.4 million low-income adults.
The federal government is picking up 100 percent of the expansion costs through 2016, and then will gradually cut back to 90 percent. But some conservatives say the costs that will fall on the states are just too big a burden, and they see vindication in the signup numbers, proof that costs will be more than projected as they have warned all along.
Obamacare originally expanded Medicaid — which traditionally served poor children, pregnant women and the disabled — to all childless low-income adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level (about $16,250 for an individual) across the country. But the Supreme Court made expansion optional in 2012. And 21 states, mostly with GOP governors, have resisted.
via Skyrocketing Medicaid signups stir state expansion fights – Rachana Pradhan – POLITICO.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 