White House Still Failing to Fix Medicaid Crisis

Kathryn Nix / March 01, 2011

Yesterday President Obama announced support for the “Empowering States to Innovate Act” authored by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Scott Brown (R-MA). The Wyden-Brown proposal would advance the enactment date of an Obamacare provision that allows states to pursue alternative routes to reform if they can meet the same targets as the President’s overhaul. Though touted by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius as “another crucial step in empowering states to lead,” the proposal would fail to deliver the level of flexibility states need to achieve successful health care reform.

Members on both sides of the aisle admit that states’ health care reform needs are vastly different and cannot be addressed by a one-size-fits-all approach like Obamacare, which imposes a pre-ordained federal version of reform on the states. A group of 29 Republican governors has written to the White House to demand greater flexibility to innovate, and even some governors on the left have quietly made the same appeal. But as Heritage expert Stuart Butler warns, Wyden-Brown won’t do the trick: (more…)