Skyrocketing Medicaid signups stir Obamacare fights - GOP: "I told you so."

[loco]

Skyrocketing Medicaid signups stir Obamacare fights
Some GOP governors are saying: "I told you so."

Medicaid enrollment under Obamacare is skyrocketing past expectations, giving some GOP governors who oppose the program’s expansion under the health law an “I told you so” moment.

More than 12 million people have signed up for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act since January 2014, and in some states that embraced that piece of the law, enrollment is hundreds of thousands beyond initial projections. Seven states have seen particularly big surges, with their overruns totaling nearly 1.4 million low-income adults.

The federal government is picking up 100 percent of the expansion costs through 2016, and then will gradually cut back to 90 percent. But some conservatives say the costs that will fall on the states are just too big a burden, and they see vindication in the signup numbers, proof that costs will be more than projected as they have warned all along.

Obamacare originally expanded Medicaid — which traditionally served poor children, pregnant women and the disabled — to all childless low-income adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level (about $16,250 for an individual) across the country. But the Supreme Court made expansion optional in 2012. And 21 states, mostly with GOP governors, have resisted.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/skyrocketing-medicaid-expansion-obamacare-republican-governors-118011.html

[whork]

 

Signup exceeds expectations = success.

Am i missing something?

[Dos Equis]

That's not a success, because they need young, healthy people to sign up and pay in order for the system to work. 

[loco]

Signup exceeds expectations = success.

Am i missing something?

"costs that will fall on the states are just too big a burden"

“If you’re spending twice as much on this program than expected, that’s twice as much money that’s being added to the national debt”

“You’re still going to spend more money overall. That’s still taxpayer money.”

[whork]

Supporters of Obamacare say the enrollment surge might lead to some budget bumps down the road, but that the historic decline in the uninsured is a major achievement. In addition, they say the expansion is providing significant health and economic benefits to states that more than offset costs.

States — and hospitals and doctors — are getting billions of dollars from the federal government to cover low-income people, letting them save money on other programs that had been fully or partly funded through state dollars.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/skyrocketing-medicaid-expansion-obamacare-republican-governors-118011.html#ixzz3atRnO0aR


The program might raise the deficit but unlike so many programs this actually benefits the whole population.