States losing billions in refusing to expand Medicaid, report finds
States losing billions in refusing to expand Medicaid, report finds Texas will lose $9.2 billion in 2022; Florida says goodbye to $5 billion; Georgia is out $4.9 billion. A new report details just how much states are losing because they don’t want to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, and it’s not chump change.
Red states may be sticking to their Republican beliefs in small government, but the Commonwealth Fund finds they are passing up billions in federal funding by saying no to the Medicaid expansion.
“By choosing not to participate, Texas, for example, will forgo an estimated $9.58 billion in federal funding in 2022. Taking into account federal taxes paid by Texas residents, the net cost to taxpayers in the state in 2022 will be more than $9.2 billion,” the report by Sherry Glied and Stephanie Ma of New York University says.
“We find that the Medicaid expansion will be a relatively large source of federal revenue to state enterprises," the report adds. States expanding Medicaid will get, on average, more than twice as much in federal funding than they get in federal highway funds, they said.
It’s the latest report on what Medicaid expansion would mean on a fiscal level to states, and the timing couldn’t be better for the administration of President Barack Obama. The White House has launched a three-week drive to highlight what it says are the benefits of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and Obama has been urging states to expand Medicaid. |
