{"id":166,"date":"2012-10-29T09:55:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=166"},"modified":"2012-10-29T09:55:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T13:55:00","slug":"the-price-of-medicaid-expansion-opt-outs-53-3-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=166","title":{"rendered":"The price of Medicaid expansion opt-outs: $53.3 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/ezra-klein\/wp\/2012\/10\/26\/the-price-of-the-scotus-health-care-decision-53-3-billion\/\">The price of Medicaid expansion opt-outs: $53.3 billion<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Supreme Court decided way back in June that the health law\u2019s expansion of Medicaid was optional rather than required. That decision, it appears, comes with a hefty price tag: $53.3 billion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>The National Association of Public Hospitals <a href=\"http:\/\/www.naph.org\/Links\/ADV\/NAPHuncompensatedcareanalysis.aspx\">estimates<\/a> that, in light of the decision, the United States will spend as much as $53.3 billion more on bills that go unpaid by the uninsured. Their analysis uses data from the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/ezra-klein\/wp\/2012\/07\/24\/cbo-is-taking-the-states-threatening-to-opt-out-of-the-medicaid-expansion-very-seriously\/\">six million  to10 million<\/a> fewer Americans will gain insurance through Medicaid after the Supreme Court decision.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cCongress certainly didn\u2019t foresee this level of uninsured and uncompensated care when it enacted the ACA,\u201d says NAPH president Bruce Seigel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Keep in mind, this isn\u2019t necessarily $53.3 billion in new spending. It\u2019s more like a cost shift. Those who would have had their bills paid by the federal government (under Medicaid) could now have the costs covered by local governments and hospitals, which tend to foot the bill for many of the health care services that go unpaid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, over the course of a decade, states opting out of the Medicaid expansion \u2013 and not drawing down funds from Washington \u2013 will save the federal government<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/ezra-klein\/wp\/2012\/07\/24\/cbo-is-taking-the-states-threatening-to-opt-out-of-the-medicaid-expansion-very-seriously\/\"> $84 billion<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s also a cost shift to those with private insurance, as hospitals charge a bit more to clients with coverage to recoup their losses on the uninsured. One study estimated that cost shifting raises annual insurance premiums by as much as 1.7 percent, or $80 annually.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The price of Medicaid expansion opt-outs: $53.3 billion The Supreme Court decided way back in June that the health law\u2019s expansion of Medicaid was optional rather than required. That decision, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=166\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The price of Medicaid expansion opt-outs: $53.3 billion&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-insurance-cost","category-medicaid"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}