Administration Plays “Medicaid Hardball” With Holdout States
Obamacare was supposed to dramatically increase Medicaid dependency in exchange for reducing some direct federal funding of hospitals. Now, some governors of states that rejected Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion are reacting negatively to the federal government’s cutting back hospital funding.
Governor Rick Scott of Florida is suing the federal government for proposing to cut Low-Income Pool (LIP) funding to hospitals, which he describes as retaliation for the state rejecting Medicaid expansion. Now, it looks like the Administration is issuing the same threat to Texas.
It is not clear why the Administration cares whether federal money sent to a state for health care is sent to Medicaid or directly to hospitals.
NCPA’s long-standing proposal for a universal, refundable tax credit addresses the issue as follows: If people do not claim the tax credit for health insurance, it gets sent to a safety-net facility where they reside. We haven’t gone deep into the details of how that gets executed. Although, my latest proposal is that all federal funding for welfare be bundled into unified Opportunity Grants
The administration wants to show that more people are insured, and Medicaid certainly does that.
The alternative would be to let people stay uninsured, and then, for the 2-4% of any group that gets seriously ill in a given year, to support public hospitals with federal grants.
It is a form of national health care instead of national health insurance.
Thank you. My point is: Is there a general theory that concludes health insurance is better than directly funded health care? I say no!