More Medicaid? No Thanks.

[Geee]

American Spectator:

The federal government is out of money. Everyone knows this. President Obama knows it, Congress knows it, our neighbors know it, even our kids know it. The United States is $15 trillion in debt, and that figure grows by leaps and bounds every second. But at least Uncle Sam has the luxury of printing more cash to help pay the bills.

The State of Florida does not have that option.And even though unemployment has declined faster in our state than almost any other over the past 18 months, we’re still climbing our way out of a substantial economic hole.

The citizens of Florida wisely added a balanced budget amendment to the state constitution in 1994.The result? Unlike President Obama and Congress, as Florida’s governor, I cannot run a budget deficit to pay for government programs. Tough budget decisions must be made every year in order to comply with state law.

Florida’s share of Medicaid payments in the last fiscal year was more than $9 billion. And that number is growing three and a half times faster than the state’s general revenue is growing. In short, every year, Florida’s Medicaid program eats a larger and larger share of the revenue pie. Expanding Medicaid now would only accelerate that unsustainable growth.

The big-government health care advocates who designed Obamacare knew that states like Florida would balk if they had to fork up billions more to pay for a Medicaid expansion, so they relied on the federal government’s ability to print billions of new dollars to pay for the up-front costs. Many recent news stories and opinion pieces tout the fact that the federal government will pay 100 percent of the expansion costs for the first three years. It sounds great, until you ask the important question: What then?