North Carolina’s decision to avoid the political left’s incessant demand for Medicaid expansion looks better and better every day. The Associated Press delivers more news to foul the punch bowl at the Medicaid expansion party.
In a recent report to Congress, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the cost of expansion was $6,366 per person for 2015, about 49 percent higher than previously estimated.
“We were told all along that the expansion population would be less costly,” said health economist Brian Blase with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia. “They are turning out to be far more expensive.” Blase previously served as a GOP congressional aide.
The new estimates could be a warning light for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who has promised that if elected president she would work to expand Medicaid in the remaining 19 states that have not done so. Higher costs would make it harder for a President Clinton to sell Obama’s full-financing plan to Congress.
Under the law, people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line — roughly $16,390 for an individual and $33,530 for a family of four — are eligible for Medicaid at little or no cost to them.
An estimated 9 million to 10 million people are covered by the Medicaid expansion, and many of the remaining uninsured are likely to be eligible if their states accept. Most of the new Medicaid recipients are low-income adults. …
… The nonpartisan experts at the CMS Office of the Actuary wrote in their report that they were expecting costs to decrease in 2015. They had reasoned that uninsured people who were putting off care would sign up for Medicaid in 2014, the first year of expansion. The experts expected that pent-up demand would ease in 2015, and per-person costs would drop. But the opposite happened: Costs went up.
An Obama administration spokesman says estimating the cost of a new health program is not an exact science.
