Thursday, August 8, 2013

What Medicaid Expansion Means to North Carolinians



North Carolinians are constantly bombarded by special interest groups, editorial boards, and general liberal riff raff about our state not expanding Medicaid.  Every one of these groups has yet addressed the cost, or how we’re going to pay for it.  Apparently, they don’t care. 

The Civitas Institute has done their homework.  They have outlined what expansion of Medicaid means for North Carolina and the country in general:

  • The federal government covers the cost of the new enrollees for only the first three years. But where would they get the money? Some estimates put the cost of expansion nationally at $118 billion over the next decade alone. If you haven't noticed, the federal government is broke.
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  • After the first three years, states would begin to pay a share of the additional costs. Some estimates place the cost of expansion to North Carolina at more than $3 billion over the next decade (these are likely very low). Where would the state get the money? State Medicaid spending has already shot up 42 percent in the last decade.
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  • Who will see the half a million new Medicaid enrollees? During a recent 8-year span, the state added 600,000 Medicaid enrollees, a whopping 50% increase in Medicaid patients. At the same time, the number of physicians accepting Medicaid patients decreased. The Medicaid system is already overcrowded, with enrollees having very limited access to actual medical care. What would happen if we jammed another half a million people into this program? That would be more than a million additional people crammed into a system chasing fewer doctors. Imagine adding a population roughly equivalent to all of Wake County into a system with already nearly 2 million people, all competing to see a dwindling number of doctors

I’ve yet to read an editorial, or an op-ed in the Charlotte Observer about the cost of this program.  No, it’s all hankies and condemnation.  Facts and consequences are irrelevant in that liberal rag.


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