AFP-Kansas Reacts to Hearing on Medicaid Expansion Bill
TOPEKA, Ks.– Americans for Prosperity-Kansas (AFP-KS) released a statement today after the Senate Committee on Public Health and Welfare heard witness testimony on Senate Bill 38. The bill would expand Medicaid by adding able-bodied adults to an already strained program and balloon an already growing state budget, putting the state deeper in the red.
“If lawmakers are truly interested in providing quality health care in our state, expanding Medicaid under Obamacare is the last thing we should do,” said AFP-KS State Director Jeff Glendening. “Expanding Medicaid to able-bodied adults will only crowd out patients who need it most and make already stretched healthcare resources scarcer. Our activists have already been mobilized in anticipation of this fight. We’ve defeated this bill before and we’ll do it again.”
Background:
Last session, Governor Brownback vetoed a Medicaid expansion bill that would have cost the state over $1.1. billion over ten years.
Medicaid is simply not cost effective. Researchers from MIT, Harvard, and Dartmouth found that Medicaid recipients only receive about 20 to 40 cents of benefit for every dollar spent on Medicaid. Insurance companies, not low-income citizens, are the biggest winners of Medicaid expansion. Kaiser Health News recently reported that Medicaid insurer profits more than tripled in 34 states and the District of Columbia after Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.
Also, states that have expanded Medicaid have experienced exploding costs and general failure:
- Ohio: National Review published an article highlighting Medicaid Expansion failure in Ohio.
- “Ohio’s Medicaid-expansion enrollment was 720,000 in fiscal year 2017, at an average cost of $437 million per month. Since January 2014, the expansion has cost state and federal taxpayers a total of $14.9 billion. Because Kasich so dramatically underestimated enrollment, state costs have already doubled his projections. Federal spending on Ohio’s Medicaid program (including traditional and expansion enrollees) increased by 48 percent from 2013 to this year, while state spending increased by 14 percent.” (Jason Hart, Opinion, “Why John Kasich Is Fighting The New Health-Care Bill,” National Review, 09/19/17)
- Massachusetts: Modern Healthcare published an article highlighting Massachusetts’ struggle to cover the rising costs of Medicaid expansion:
- “As the federal government no longer covers the total cost of expansion, Massachusetts said it needs to slim down the program because the costs are unsustainable.”
- “‘At 40% of the commonwealth’s budget, MassHealth’s continued growth will constrain the state budget unless significant reforms are implemented and key aspects of the program are restructured,’ Marylou Sudders, the state’s health and human services secretary, said in a Sept. 20 letter to CMS Administrator Seema Verma.” (Virgil Dickson, “Massachusetts Seeks To Move Adults Off Medicaid, Limit Drug Coverage,” Modern Healthcare, 09/27/17)
