Forget Medicaid expansion. Congress is pushing a Medicaid takeover.
That’s the unspoken reality of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending bill, a major part of which concerns the federal low-income health care program. While the bill is being sold as a means of providing coverage to millions more people, it would fundamentally change a big part of Medicaid from a state-run model to a purely federal operation. Such a shift would leave the already struggling program even less able to meet the medical needs of vulnerable Americans.
The impetus behind this transformation is simple. President Biden and congressional Democrats dislike that 12 states have refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. From Texas to Florida to South Dakota, governors and state legislators have held out for the better part of a decade. Years of pressure have failed to convince these states to give in, so the president and Congress have decided to force it on them anyway.
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