Friday, December 26, 2014

Letter: Expand Medicaid or pay for other states’ expansions. Bill Barrett. Salt Lake Tribune. December 25, 2014.

Letter: Expand Medicaid or pay for other states’ expansions
Regarding the continuing dislike for Obamacare in states like Utah, here is something fascinating I picked up while reading Vox:
"Republican governors and legislatures in state after state rejected the [Medicaid] expansion. Rejecting the Medicaid expansion, however, doesn’t exempt a state from the taxes and spending cuts Obamacare uses to fund the Medicaid expansion. A September analysis from McClatchy estimated that ‘if the 23 states that have rejected expanding Medicaid under the 2010 health care law continue to do so for the next eight years, they’ll pay $152 billion to extend the program in other states — while receiving nothing in return.’ That’s a helluva gift from (mostly) red states to (mostly) blue ones.
"Now the Supreme Court will take up King v. Burwell, in which the plaintiffs argue that the text of the Affordable Care Act makes it illegal for subsidies to flow through federally-run exchanges. If they’re successful, then it will be possible for a state that opposes to Obamacare to withdraw from both the Medicaid expansion and the exchange subsidies — that is to say, from pretty much all of Obamacare’s benefits. But they will still pay all of its costs. They will still pay the law’s taxes and their residents will still feel the law’s Medicare cuts. Obamacare will become a pure subsidy from the states that hate the law most to the states that have embraced it. It’s like a fiscal version of reverse psychology."
I’d call it poetic justice.
Bill Barrett

Torrey

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