Monday, August 08, 2016

Medicaid Expansion Woes

Jonathon Gruber and his band of merry men and women at CMS keep finding new surprises in the cost and true impact of #Obamacare.

Recently we discovered that the man credited with counting on the stupidity of the American voter underestimated the popularity of the free health care program known as Medicaid. Instead of 12 million new Medicaid enrollees we have 15 million.

No big deal. As they say in DC, a million here, a million there, before you know it you have some serious numbers.

Now it seems that not only have Medicaid ranks expanded like my waistline during the holiday season, but these folks are costing more than anticipated.
The Department of Health and Human Services just "found that the ACA's Medicaid expansion enrollees cost an average of $6,366 in (fiscal) 2015--49 percent higher than the $4,281 amount that the agency projected in last year's report." - Maciver Institute
How can they miss by that much?

Consider that the Transcontinental Railroad covered 1776 miles. Constructed between 1863 and 1869 the two rail lines met at Promontory Point, Utah. While many facts contribute to the story, one that amazes me is that the teams started at two different points and met in the middle. One team started in California while the other in Iowa. Yet they managed to meet at a precise point.

So if two teams of laborers can travel that much distance and hit their mark with precision, why can't the high paid goofballs in DC make accurate predictions of how much #ObamacareFail is supposed to cost?

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