Governors vs. ObamaCare
January 24 | Posted by mrossol | ObamaCareBy STEPHEN MOORE
Republicans in the House aren’t the only ones in favor of repealing ObamaCare. So are many of the nation’s governors, who complain that the law drills big holes in state budgets.
In a Jan. 7 letter to President Obama, more than 30 current and former GOP governors urged the White House to remove “excessive constraints placed on us by healthcare-related federal mandates.” The letter says that ObamaCare and spending mandates from the stimulus bill passed in 2009 “prevent states from managing their Medicaid programs for their unique Medicaid populations.”
ObamaCare’s mandated spending comes at a time when states “will face unprecedented budget challenges,” write the governors, and the biggest problem is Medicaid because “enrollment is up [and] revenues are down.”
One of the strongest advocates of replacing ObamaCare is Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who says that the new law and other mandates will “cost Texas $9 billion in new expenses at a time when our budget is already tight.” Without reforms in Medicaid rules, he predicts that Texas will be required to cut the rates paid to hospitals and doctors by 48%.
According to the governors, ObamaCare’s cost to states will be significantly greater than the Congressional Budget Office’s $20 billion estimate over 10 years. Indiana alone estimates that the bill will cost the Hoosier state between $2.6 billion and $3.1 billion. Pennsylvania says ObamaCare could add 800,000 new enrollees to its Medicaid bills.
ObamaCare supporters counter that these extra costs are paid for entirely by the federal government in the first year of the law’s implementation, and after that the feds pick up 90% of the tab. But Ed Haislmaier, a health-care expert at the Heritage Foundation, has reported that this doesn’t account for “billions of dollars of new administrative costs to states and for the fact that the individual mandate for ObamaCare will add potentially millions of patients to the Medicaid rolls” who otherwise would not have qualified. “This law could cost the states easily twice as much as anticipated,” he said. “It’s going to make Medicaid’s financial problems even worse for states.”
via Governors vs. ObamaCare – WSJ.com.
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