To Reform Health Care and Restore Fiscal Responsibility, Don’t Forget Medicaid

Kathryn Nix / December 20, 2010

In 2010, both health care reform and the need for deficit reduction gained the policy spotlight. What was largely neglected as a crucial part of both of these discussions, however, is the need to reform Medicaid, the federal–state health program for low-income Americans.

Recommendations to put the nation’s fiscal house back in order have come from the President’s deficit commission and other serious commentators, and have sparked a serious debate over how best to close growing budget gaps. Long-term deficits are almost completely the result of unsustainable growth in entitlement spending. Before passage of Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security alone were on track to consume all federal revenue by 2052. The new health law only accelerates the process. (more…)