Overwhelming Medicaid enrollment crippling state budgets

single payer sounds good but I will never go for it. Basically, you are talking about medicare for all. Look at all the fraud we have now in medicare, and that is just for 65+. Can you imagine what it would look like if 300 million were covered? No, not for me. I'll pay for the poor, and I'll pay for myself.

I could however go for a government catastrophic policy. That would be where we the people decide to pay for any unfortunate individual whose medical bills exceeds 10% of his income.
Loyek. Is the fraud in medicare caused by medicare or is it caused by the service providers who are billing medicare. Medicare spends much time and money trying to catch these cheats. Would you rather get rid of medicare and depend completely on the service providers to treat you honestly and not over charge you, or would you prefer to have medicare there as a watchdog?
 
Loyek. Is the fraud in medicare caused by medicare or is it caused by the service providers who are billing medicare. Medicare spends much time and money trying to catch these cheats. Would you rather get rid of medicare and depend completely on the service providers to treat you honestly and not over charge you, or would you prefer to have medicare there as a watchdog?
no,no, I always want to take care of the poor. That should be very simple and efficient. When you start talking about taking care of everybody it gets kind of sloppy. And that is my money they are getting sloppy with. And yes. I would rather get rid of medicare.
 
no,no, I always want to take care of the poor. That should be very simple and efficient. When you start talking about taking care of everybody it gets kind of sloppy. And that is my money they are getting sloppy with. And yes. I would rather get rid of medicare.
OK. Fair enough.
 
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.
 
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See now you getting to the leftist vs real world situation.
We can't keep benefits up and still be inviting million of illegals onto our handout programs.
Choices have to be made by states and the federal govt.
At some point in time enough is enough.

we say stop feeding the beast until its starts serving the tax payers properly. GDP grew faster than expected after the sequester.

We all agree that healthcare is important. So lets start actually start budgeting responsibly, trying to lower taxes cut waste like the sequester did grow he economy stop this mindless immigration and pay for everyone's who is a citizen's healthcare. If there is money leftover then we can be more generous. Plus... if we lower taxes a lot the economy booms and we can give more to charity.
 
The poor seem to be a horrible investment. Just sayin'

Au contraire. Depends upon your point of view.

"Subsidizing the poor/lazy/parasitic/ne'er-do-wells (with taxpayer funds)... has secured their vote in perpetuity for the DemoCraps.
 
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The Federal government is committed to covering 100% of the cost of expansion phasing down to 90% by 2020. There is NO cost (ZERO) to the State for expansion until 2016 or 2017, at which point the net cost, after expansion related revenues are added in, will be minimal. The Federal contribution is calculated by the federal government as percentage -- so the greater than anticipated enrollment will also result in a bump up of the Federal contribution and a bump up of expansion related revenues to the States..

All of the professionally done cost studies by economists have concluded that the additional revenues that will accrue because of expansion will cover, or even exceed according to some studies, the small amount the States will eventually have to kick in. (This is where those percentage Federal Contribution Figures come from and they can be adjusted, if need be.) This is going to cost all of us a lot of money, but it isn't going to cost the States hardly anything. And even if those projections turn out to be a little off the mark the ratio of benefit to cost, from a State Budget point of view is through the roof!

The cost to us federal tax payers will go up because of the much greater demand than anticipated. However that cost is there whether our State expanded or not. Thus those of us who live in States that did not expand get cheated to an even greater extent because of the greater than anticipated demand. Not one red cent is being saved by the Sates that do not expand, rather they are denying thousands access to care and wrecking the health of their citizens, all for purely partisan political reasons. This is political malpractice of the highest order!

The reality is that this law is in place, whether we like it our not. I personally think it is a badly flawed law for reasons I have stated many times. Essentially it retains all of the worst features of U.S. style medical care,i.e., it leaves the Cartel virtually untouched -- and when you have a cartel, and customers don't have the option of walking, you can expect prices to go through the roof. But the one good thing that the ACA did do was to expand access to millions! We should all be very happy about this one aspect of the ACA.

Can you explain why every state that added Medicaid expansion is projecting Medicaid budget issues starting in 2017? On average the states experienced 70% greater enrollment than they expected - how can you claim this will not impact the upcoming state budgets. The states screaming the loudest about this problem are traditional blue states - which are projected to have the greatest un-budgeted additional costs due to Medicaid expansion.

Obviously all the "studies by economists have concluded that the additional revenues" covering the expanded Medicaid costs are not holding water. In fact they are complete bunk when it comes to the state budget situations.

As I said earlier you can make a case on the social benefits vs. the total cost of Obamacare, but you cannot deny that Medicaid expansion will be a wrecking ball to state budgets post-2017. All these states will be screaming for the Feds to pick up the unexpected cost, this will be occurring directly at a time where the budget constraints in Washington due to excessive debt will be the top problem.
 
There is much
See now you getting to the leftist vs real world situation.
We can't keep benefits up and still be inviting million of illegals onto our handout programs.
Choices have to be made by states and the federal govt.
At some point in time enough is enough.

we say stop feeding the beast until its starts serving the tax payers properly. GDP grew faster than expected after the sequester.

We all agree that healthcare is important. So lets start actually start budgeting responsibly, trying to lower taxes cut waste like the sequester did grow he economy stop this mindless immigration and pay for everyone's who is a citizen's healthcare. If there is money leftover then we can be more generous. Plus... if we lower taxes a lot the economy booms and we can give more to charity.
There is much to agree with here, Jem. You're a good man and a good citizen!
 
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