1. thanks for the info... but you did not address part of my point. the main part. before asking the question... I read on multiple sites... some of the recent new medicaid enrollees enrolled because they lost their health insurance or could no longer afford it. you are not denying that obamacare did that to some people are you? I had hoped you had those numbers. Was it a trivial amount or a large amount of people.
2. you seem to be denying the point of the revised projections. Based on the fact more people have signed up, the revenue short fall is projected to grow substantially. To have been a useful answer you should have actually addressed the new situation rather than fall back on Gruber / Obama sales pitches.
3. we know until 2017 the feds are suppose to cover it. You know that, we know that, that is how obama pitched it... take the heroin now... pay for some of it later. This whole argument is about 2017 being to more difficult than projected because more people enrolled.
Why do you keep talking about now... that is completely irrelevant to the issue we were addressing.
thank you for the response.
Re: " I read on multiple sites... some of the recent new medicaid enrollees enrolled because they lost their health insurance or could no longer afford it. you are not denying that obamacare did that to some people are you? I had hoped you had those numbers. Was it a trivial amount or a large amount of people."
I have no reason to think that Obama care had anything at all to do with this, do you?. I can't give you any hard numbers, but neither have I looked for them. I would ask you to use your common sense here, knowing that the income line for a single person being able to qualify for expanded medicaid is about 16K/yr.
Realistically, how many of these people do you think lost their health insurance coverage because of Obamacare?!!! I certainly don't know, but I would be surprised to learn that any of them could afford health insurance premiums without some help. I can tell you, though, what did happen. When these folks went to the insurance exchange they could not qualify for help with their premiums because they made too little!!! You see, the insurance premium assistance was predicated on all these folks being covered under the expansion of medicaid. That's how the Republican Governors put the screws to all of these poor folks!!!
State tax revenues are supposed to grow in proportion to the amount that medicaid is expanded. If that turns out to be true, than according to the estimates the cost to the States won't increase significantly even if the number qualifying for medicaid is significantly greater than anticipated. It all depends on how accurate the revenue projections turn out to be.
One of the additional costs being incurred right now by the States that did not expand is due to closing of many small rural clinics and hospitals. This is causing layoffs, a loss of State revenues, and additional travel and medical expenses to be incurred by former patients of these hospitals. These hospitals all say they were dependent on medicaid expansion being approved to be able to keep their doors open. Not expanding is forcing many rural patients to seek care at more expensive, distant, large city hospitals.
It is too soon to tell about the revised projections just as it is too soon to tell about the original projections. In the meantime 100% of costs due to expansion will be covered by the federal government. Would the possibility that the costs to the states might be higher than anticipated by 2020 be a good reason for all these governors to deny coverage to thousands, collectively millions, and ship their constituents hard earned income off to Blue States via the federal government? Don't you think realistically that the amount of federal subsidy will be adjusted down the road according to actual experience? Don't you think that even if their were no increased revenue at all coming into State Treasuries from expansion, that providing good quality care to thousands of your your constituents at a 90% discount would be a grand bargain in any case? Wouldn't any sensible governor, or anyone with enough sense to come in out of the rain, jump at the chance to do that?
Of course, the actual cost to the States could range somewhere between a modest profit to a modest expense. Most likely it will amount to a few percentage points of the total cost of expansion once revenues are added in. Even a few percent of the total cost is a lot of money when you are talking about providing the most expensive medical care in the world for hundreds of thousands/State. This is not by any means a free program! it will be hideously expensive like all our health care. But at least with medicaid, and medicare too, there are some much needed price controls. We Federal tax payers will be paying the bill, and it will be a whopper. The States won't, however, be paying much at all for the additional cost of medicaid that is attributable to expansion. This is why this crap coming from these Republican governors is so disturbing, so deceitful, so loaded with politics, and all at the expense of we citizens.. We taxpayers have a right to complain bitterly about the way we are being treated. We are paying for medicaid expansion, but not getting it. For political gain, our Republican Governors are stealing from us, and on top of that, they are lying about it.