Medicaid didn’t get much mention during tonight’s presidential news conference, but it’s getting more attention from the media as competing health care proposals bounce around the Capitol. Governors are coming out strongly against potential Medicaid expansions and I can’t blame them. Medicaid eats up a huge portion of state budgets and that portion has only grown since the economy tanked. Even if the feds pick up the costs of expansion for the next few years, as some bills propose, states could still be left in a lurch when the next downturn comes.
Medicaid could be an important tool in achieving universal coverage, but we need to re-examine its current cost-sharing model. States cannot be expected to cover more people while receiving only slightly more federal aid. And we need to ensure that health care reform lowers costs in public programs as well as in the private sector. More on that tomorrow.
