Think College Is Expensive Now? Wait Until ObamaCare

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Parents and students facing sky-high state-run college tuitions aren't likely to be thinking about ObamaCare. But perhaps they should, since if left in place ObamaCare will likely end up making college still more expensive.

Why? Because ObamaCare relies heavily on Medicaid — the federal/state program that provides health insurance for the poor — to expand coverage.

But Medicaid is already swallowing up state budgets, forcing states to cut back on everything else, especially support for two- and four-year public colleges.

"The two biggest items of every state budget are Medicaid and education," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told IBD recently. "As the Medicaid mandate rises, the educational funding declines. That is passed on to universities and they raise tuition in order to make up for it."

A report from the State Budget Crisis Task Force found that even before ObamaCare kicks in, Medicaid costs have been growing "faster than the economy" and "faster than state revenue." As a result, Medicaid now consumes 24% of state funds, and its ongoing growth "can no longer be absorbed without significant cuts to other essential state programs like education."

It's a problem President Obama should have known about when designing ObamaCare, since his own budget director at the time — Peter Orszag — had co-authored a 2003 paper for the Brookings Institution looking at this issue.

Orszag concluded that "primarily due to rising state Medicaid obligations, parents and students have been asked to pay an increasingly large share of the costs in public higher education."