Congress Continues to Deny Reality of Medicaid

Marguerite Bowling / September 16, 2009

When a trade reporter asked a group of health policy analysts this week to identify the one issue Democrats in Congress won’t address as they push health reform legislation, Heritage health policy analyst Dennis Smith was quick to point out that a Medicaid expansion is an incoming pandemic to federal and state budgets.

Expansions of Medicaid — the federal health program for the poor that is administered and partially paid by the states administered — are in nearly all of the health care overhaul bills currently being considered in Congress. As Smith notes in his most recent research:

Over the period 2010-2019, the House bill would spend $438 billion to expand Medicaid to all individuals with incomes up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level, or FPL ($16,245 for an individual, $33,075 for a family of four) and $773 billion to provide new public subsidies to individuals between 150 percent and 400 percent of the FPL ($43,320 for an individual, $88,200 for a family of 4).

But the proposal worsens what’s already a bleak situation, Smith told the audience of the health reform briefing sponsored by the Alliance for Health Care Reform. “Putting another 11 million to 15 million people on Medicaid is not realistic,” Smith said. (more…)