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Bloomberg
Republican
Governors Finding Sense in Medicaid
Expansion
By Alex Wayne
Feb 7, 2013
Six
Republican governors have agreed to expand
Medicaid, the second-largest piece of President Barack Obama’s U.S.
health-care
overhaul, accepting federal money to ensure their state’s residents
have access
to medical coverage.
Michigan
Governor Rick Snyder, an Affordable
Care Act opponent, said yesterday it makes sense for the “physical and
fiscal
health” of his state to participate in the law’s expansion of Medicaid,
the
state-federal health plan for the poor. He became the sixth Republican
governor
to jump on board, following John Kasich of Ohio’s announcement three
days ago.
Snyder,
Kasich and the rest of nation’s 30
Republican governors generally oppose the $1.2 trillion health law as
too
costly. Five Republican governors have agreed to participate in the
core
provision of the law, building new marketplaces called exchanges to
sell health
insurance.
Kasich
said while he remains opposed to the
individual mandate and other provisions of the law, the Medicaid
expansion is
different.
“This
is not an endorsement of Obamacare,” he
said. “I think it’s something to be considered separately from some
people’s
strong feelings -- including mine -- about Obamacare.”
Kasich’s
willingness to participate may help
“break the logjam” among Republican governors opposing the Medicaid
expansion,
Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said in a statement.
Families
USA is a Washington-based consumer advocacy group that supports the
health-care
overhaul.
Hospital
Burden
Obama’s
health law, which passed Congress in
2010 without a single Republican vote, may extend insurance over the
next
decade to about 27 million people who are currently uninsured. The
Congressional Budget Office estimates that 8 million more people will
enroll in
Medicaid programs next year because of the expansion, which raises the
income
eligibility limits.
Hospitals
also have been pushing governors
nationwide to participate in the expansion as they look to erase bad
debt piled
up from treating uninsured patients. In Michigan, Snyder said an
expanded
Medicaid program will cover 46 percent of the state’s 450,000 uninsured
adults
and supplant the use of costly emergency rooms for primary care…
Read
the rest of the article at Bloomberg
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