A costly blunder
Published September 6, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, September 6, 2014.
North Carolina’s Republican leaders made a shortsighted decision in 2013 to reject Medicaid coverage for more residents.
A new report by McClatchy Newspapers and Kaiser Health News puts a price on the mistake — $10 billion. That’s what it likely will cost North Carolina taxpayers by 2022 to support expanded Medicaid coverage in other states, while none of the benefit comes back.
It’s not only that several hundred thousand North Carolina residents could receive reliable medical care, contributing to a healthier population and more productive workforce. The billions in additional Medicaid dollars would help support the state’s health care providers and reduce their burden of uncompensated care. This effect already has been demonstrated in states that agreed to Medicaid expansion, the report found.
The deal seemed like a good one. The federal government would pay the full cost of expansion for three years, then 90 percent afterward. The state would foot the rest of the bill.
Gov. Pat McCrory said no because he believed the state’s Medicaid system was “broken” and couldn’t take on any more work. Legislative leaders said no because they claimed Washington might renege on the agreement, leaving the state with too much financial liability. It was also no secret they did not want to support a program associated with the Affordable Care Act.
That’s regrettable. North Carolina residents are already paying for Medicaid expansion through their federal taxes. The result is a dollar drain from North Carolina to other states.
McClatchy quoted a critic, John Locke Foundation health care analyst Katherine Restrepo, who justified the decision because it holds down overall Medicaid spending. The expansion, she said, is “taxing future generations to provide benefits for our current generation.”
North Carolina could use the same logic to refuse federal transportation and education dollars, or to ask retirees to refuse their Social Security checks.
Some states that initially refused expansion have seen the light. Pennsylvania has just crafted an agreement with Washington to implement its own program called Healthy PA. It includes a private coverage option using federal subsidies.
Because McCrory’s Medicaid reform plan was not enacted by the legislature this year, he should come back with a better plan next year. He should look at the Pennsylvania approach as a means of accessing federal dollars to provide full health coverage to more North Carolinians.
On average, North Carolina residents are not among the healthiest Americans. High poverty and lack of access to quality, preventative medical care takes a high toll. That’s bad enough. It adds insult to injury when North Carolina taxpayers are paying for more than they’re getting.
North Carolinians can’t afford to subsidize medical coverage for people in other states when hundreds of thousands of residents here are going without.
September 6, 2014 at 11:45 am
Richard Bunce says:
So will the GNR run an editorial about the Democratic Majority in the US Congress in 2010 making a costly blunder by placing a lower income limit on the ACA Marketplace tax credit/subsidy which denied persons with incomes below 100% of poverty in all States access to real healthcare insurance through the ACA Marketplace accepted by significantly more providers than Medicaid with a subsidy that would have paid their entire premium?
