As heavy lobbying by the hospital industry intersects with immediate political considerations, a growing number of Republican governors are caving in to Medicaid expansion through President Obama’s healthcare law. In the process, they are imposing massive and unnecessary financial burdens on taxpayers.
Expanding Medicaid is one of the key ways that Obamacare is seeking to increase the number of insured Americans. As originally written, the law would have stripped existing federal Medicaid funding to any state that didn’t participate. But following a 2012 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, states were given the option to refuse the expansion while maintaining existing funding. Instead, they’d only be giving up the smaller pile of federal money that would have gone to the new Medicaid population.
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