States that accepted Obamacare expansions have had Medicaid enrollment increase 18 percent, and total Medicaid spending grow 17.7 percent, a recent report from Kaiser Family Foundation has shown. Alternatively, states that chose not expand under Obamacare had Medicaid enrollment increase 5.1 percent and total spending grew 6.1 percent.
This is not particularly surprising. Obamacare has certainly led to more being enrolled within Medicaid—which has been costly for taxpayers.
Top Republicans on Capitol Hill’s health committees are asking the Obama administration to lower payment rates for insurers who benefit from a controversial “reinsurance” program in the Affordable Care Act.
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and House Education and Workforce Chairman John Kline (R-Minn.) sent the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services a letter Tuesday, obtained by Morning Consult, calling for reduced reimbursement and to allow certain plans to not participate.
This week, the U.S. House of Representatives will consider H.R. 3762, the “Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015.” This bill would gut the major provisions of Obamacare and essentially make it unworkable. It’s a bill that conservative House Members should support. H.R. 3762 is a net spending cut, a net tax cut, and would reduce the national debt.
While most of the media have tuned out and the chattering class has mostly moved on, a recent article by Megan McArdle in Bloomberg View, “Obamacare delivers. Just not very much,” reminded me that the calamity that is Obamacare can’t be swept under the rug. It is clear nothing will keep President Obama from declaring victory on every front, but the fact is, Obamacare is a bust. As a result, the next president will be confronted with the reality that at the end of the day, all Obamacare amounts to is a convoluted expansion of Medicaid that we can’t afford.
The catastrophic failure of Obamacare’s launch is now far in the past. But the public’s acquiescence to a law that keeps creating new problems should not be taken as a sign of enthusiastic acceptance, much less as a sign that Obamacare is working.
The important thing is how each of Obamacare’s current problems — skyrocketing premiums, lower than expected enrollment, and the collapse of several cooperative plans — is related to the others.