The Key Fact the Media Missed When Reporting on Obamacare Medicaid Expansion

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Heritage Foundation:

States that accepted Obamacare expansions have had Medicaid enrollment increase 18 percent, and total Medicaid spending grow 17.7 percent, a recent report from Kaiser Family Foundation has shown. Alternatively, states that chose not expand under Obamacare had Medicaid enrollment increase 5.1 percent and total spending grew 6.1 percent.

 

This is not particularly surprising. Obamacare has certainly led to more being enrolled within Medicaid – which has been costly for taxpayers.

 

Unfortunately, some reporters misread the study and have concluded that it was in fact less costly for states to expand Medicaid through Obamacare.

 

What tripped up these reporters were figures in the study that related to state government’s share of total spending. Kaiser found that state spending on Medicaid increased 3.4 percent in expansion states, but 6.9 percent in non-expansion states.