via Wall Street Journal
Advocates in Washington of the Affordable Care Act have been fighting tooth and nail to preserve the president’s signature health-care law—and they’re fighting even harder to expand it in the states. Conservative lawmakers in our home states of Utah and Florida recently defeated a combined three proposals to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare. They were absolutely right to do so, as the fiscal messes in states that did expand Medicaid demonstrate.
Recall that the Affordable Care Act was designed to essentially bribe states to expand their Medicaid programs: The feds offered to pay 100% of additional costs through 2016, dropping to 90% by 2020. This “free money” prompted 30 states and the District of Columbia to take the deal. Democratic activists have joined with state hospital lobbies to pressure lawmakers in the remaining 20 state capitals to follow.
That was certainly the case this year in Utah and Florida, where we live. This spring the Utah state Senate passed a Medicaid expansion bill backed by Gov. Gary Herbert, who espoused the “free money” argument during his January State of the State address. “We can either watch our hard-earned tax dollars remain on the table in Washington, D.C.,” he said, “or we can bring back a significant amount of our own money to be spent on Utahans.” The more conservative House, which noted the proposal’s $328 million price tag over 10 years, never passed the bill out of committee..
