If we want to make headway on improving public policy discourse, a good place to start might be with how we’re debating Medicaid policy, in particular how it might be affected by pending legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including legislation presented on Thursday by Senate Republicans.
Medicaid has long been on an unsustainable cost growth trajectory. This was true long before the ACA was passed in 2010, though the ACA exacerbated the problem. Annual federal Medicaid spending is currently projected to grow from $389 billion in 2017 to $650 billion in 2027. The biggest problem with that growth rate is that it’s faster than what’s projected for our economy as a whole. As with Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid costs are growing faster than our ability to finance them.
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The Senate bill is the product of a decision not to repeal Obamacare but to improve things where possible—moving incrementally in the direction of a more functional and more market-oriented system—within the framework Obamacare established.
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