States May End Up Making All the Decisions
This is from The Washington Post:
A bill approved by the Finance Committee would leave virtually every major decision to state officials…States could let low-income families shop the exchanges or offer them some other kind of coverage, such as policies already offered to state employees. Under a provision authored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), states could even bypass the exchange mechanism and try to expand coverage in other ways.
Expanding Medicaid eligibility to all adults who earn just a bit more than the federal poverty level, as Congress is proposing, could easily add 1 million people to Texas Medicaid… But the program has huge administrative problems and takes more than three months to sign up some applicants…”these Medicaid expansions could turn out to be an empty promise.”
This is very interesting. I wonder if states will be free to create pro-free-enterprise reforms, rather than top-down, bureaucratic reforms.
Tom, I think you are being much too optimistic.
I think Ken is probably right, but it is an intriguing thought.
Let’s hope Ron Wyden prevails here.
A million more people enrolled in Texas’ Medicaid program! Texas doesn’t have a state income tax. But that could change if it is forced to provide Medicaid to one million additional people.