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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