The highly anticipated Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare could leave
overzealous state governments holding the bag on expensive Medicaid and
health insurance programs.
The 2010 health care overhaul charged states with creating insurance exchanges, which would allow lower income residents and those without health insurance to join in healthcare pools offered by major insurers. It also asked states to prepare technological changes to their health systems and hospitals, as well as prepare for Medicaid reforms with 2014 as a target date for getting the changes up and running.
Some states, however, embraced the reforms faster than others—and could face huge budget increases as a result.
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton expanded Medicaid eligibility to childless low-income adults upon entering office in 2011—three years ahead of the Affordable Care Act’s scheduled implementation. The early implementation qualified Minnesota for increased reimbursements from the federal government to cover 95,000 new users.
The result has been a $4 billion per year program that has attracted four federal investigations into the program’s high cost.
“Gov. Dayton was gung ho about holding all of these meetings about what the world would look like under Obamacare, and we saw taxpayer dollars go right out the window,” said Republican state Rep. Mary Franson. “Now for political reasons, you can’t just kick people out [of Medicaid] because they have become dependent; it’s a terrible situation.”
If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare on Thursday, Minnesota will lose the dollar-for-dollar Medicaid match the federal government planned to provide state governments.
Read more: http://freebeacon.com/on-the-hook/
The 2010 health care overhaul charged states with creating insurance exchanges, which would allow lower income residents and those without health insurance to join in healthcare pools offered by major insurers. It also asked states to prepare technological changes to their health systems and hospitals, as well as prepare for Medicaid reforms with 2014 as a target date for getting the changes up and running.
Some states, however, embraced the reforms faster than others—and could face huge budget increases as a result.
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton expanded Medicaid eligibility to childless low-income adults upon entering office in 2011—three years ahead of the Affordable Care Act’s scheduled implementation. The early implementation qualified Minnesota for increased reimbursements from the federal government to cover 95,000 new users.
The result has been a $4 billion per year program that has attracted four federal investigations into the program’s high cost.
“Gov. Dayton was gung ho about holding all of these meetings about what the world would look like under Obamacare, and we saw taxpayer dollars go right out the window,” said Republican state Rep. Mary Franson. “Now for political reasons, you can’t just kick people out [of Medicaid] because they have become dependent; it’s a terrible situation.”
If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare on Thursday, Minnesota will lose the dollar-for-dollar Medicaid match the federal government planned to provide state governments.
Read more: http://freebeacon.com/on-the-hook/
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