Recently on Capitol Hill, North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan made the bold choice to speak up in support of Obamacare. Specifically, Hagan criticized Tar Heel State lawmakers for refusing to expand Medicaid under President Obama’s health care law, and lauded the supposed benefits of expansion. While on the surface Medicaid expansion may seem like a good (and politically expedient) idea, a closer look reveals potentially dire consequences for low-income families, hardworking taxpayers, and essential government services like roads and schools. But in the midst of a tough re-election fight, Senator Hagan has chosen to ignore the facts and risks, putting politics over people.
Medicaid expansion is a de facto expansion of Obamacare. Hagan endorsed it anyway, saying “these are some of the most vulnerable in our society.” She is either willfully or ignorantly neglecting the true impact on society’s most vulnerable. The poorest citizens, as well as children, the elderly, the disabled, and pregnant women are already largely covered under Medicaid. Adding several thousand new patients, many of whom are childless, able-bodied working-age adults, will only strain health care access and exacerbate the problems that already plague the program.
Over thirty percent of doctors refuse to accept new Medicaid patients, presenting a challenge for those patients to access care. This is due to Medicaid’s poor reimbursement rates, which will only decline further with Medicaid expansion. Expansion adds several thousand new patients, but not a single new caretaker. Thus, expanding Medicaid would leave the most at-risk populations with even worse health care options.
Hagan further asserts that those left uninsured as a result of not expanding Medicaid will seek emergency room care – but a Harvard study showed that Medicaid expansion itself increases emergency room use, because of the difficulty Medicaid patients have in seeing a doctor. Emergency room use skyrocketed 40 percent among Oregon’s newly insured Medicaid patients following the state’s 2008 expansion.
Worst, Hagan is advocating for a program that actually worsens health outcomes for society’s poorest. A University of Virginia study found that major surgery patients were 13 percent more likely to die than their uninsured counterparts. A Johns Hopkins study found that lung transplant patients on Medicaid were 29 percent more likely to die within three years. And a University of Pennsylvania study found that colon cancer patients with Medicaid had higher rates of surgical complications and mortality than their uninsured counterparts. These numbers are even worse when compared to people on private insurance.
Not only would Medicaid expansion be bad for the people who would be enrolled in the program, it would also be a raw deal for the taxpayers funding it. The federal government promises to cover 100 percent of the costs for three years, and then pare down their contribution to 90 percent by 2020. But this guarantee assumes that the federal government will live up to its promises – a dubious assertion given that the nation is $17 trillion in debt and entitlement programs are the primary cause of this seemingly bottomless pit. Furthermore, other states have already experienced Medicaid expansion costs far exceeding expectations. For example, Arizona’s 2010 expansion was estimated to cost $389 million, but the final price tag ended up over $1.6 billion.
When states need to pay more than previously anticipated, taxpayers are left holding the bill. The difference would be paid by tax hikes, funding cuts to other government services like roads, schools, and emergency response, or both.
Obamacare’s countless flaws are wreaking havoc on millions of families across the country. People do not need any more negative consequences of this train-wreck for which Senator Kay Hagan cast the deciding vote. Citizens should urge their states not to expand Medicaid.
Obamacare Medicaid expansion fails in the most basic goal of health care reform and puts taxpayers on the hook in the process. For Senator Hagan to advocate expansion of such an abysmal program is shockingly irresponsible. Hagan should stop thinking about politics, and start thinking about people – Medicaid expansion is bad medicine.
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Edit: An earlier version of this piece read, “As is, only one in four doctors accepts Medicaid,” which has been changed to, “Over thirty percent of doctors refuse to accept new Medicaid patients.”
