Poor Americans Deserve a More Compassionate Health Care Solution than Current Medicaid

[Geee]

Heritage Foundation:

Helping the poor is not an issue that is exclusive to one side of the political spectrum.

 

The question is not whether to help those in need but how best to help them. A timely example that illustrates the differing approaches the left and right have on this is therole of Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act.

 

Medicaid was established in 1965 to provide a health care safety net for certain vulnerable categories of low-income people. In general, this has meant poor women and their children and the elderly and disabled. Since Medicaid is a joint federal-state program, the states share in the cost of the program and in determining the size and scope of the program beyond any federal minimum standards.

 

The Affordable Care Act allows states to add another category to Medicaid: able-bodied adults, many of whom are without children. The ACA also provides much higher federal funding–as compared to the funding for traditional groups (like moms and kids and the disabled)–to entice the states to expand their program to these able-bodied adults. So it’s not surprising that recent analysis of enrollment by my colleagues at the Heritage Foundation has shown that the vast majority of coverage gains under the ACA have not been a result of the so-called “marketplace” exchange but rather due to an ever expanding Medicaid program.