What will Obamacare expansion cost Ohio taxpayers?
By Jason Hart
http://watchdog.org
Ohio taxpayers should brace for sticker shock from Gov. John Kasich’s Obamacare Medicaid expansion, by 2017 at the latest.
Kasich’s Medicaid expansion has cost $2.4 billion in just 13 months. The federal government is currently paying for 100 percent of program benefits, but federal funding is set to drop to 95 percent Jan. 1, 2017.
In the near term, the most pressing question is how Kasich, a Republican, plans to pay for Obamacare expansion benefits when a $2.56 billion Ohio Controlling Board appropriation is exhausted this month.
The Kasich administration has failed to respond to multiple Ohio Watchdog inquiries, and Ohio newspapers fail to recognize the significance of Kasich’s Obamacare expansion running out of money four months early.
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With the federal government $18 trillion in debt, the enduring question is when — not if — states will find themselves stuck with a larger-than-promised share of the Obamacare expansion tab. Ohio pays 38 percent of the cost for its traditional Medicaid beneficiaries.
In January, the Ohio Department of Medicaid spent $301,999,433 on Kasich’s Obamacare expansion. If Congress cut the Obamacare expansion’s federal match rate to equal traditional Medicaid funding, Ohio taxpayers would be on the hook for $114 million per month.
By assuming no federal cuts and exploiting a tax loophole, the Kasich administration expects state costs to be more than balanced with tax revenue from Medicaid managed care organizations receiving billions in new Obamacare spending.
To buoy its budget, Ohio is taxing welfare payments covered by federal taxpayers — or, more accurately, covered with money borrowed from foreign governments and future generations.
Kasich put able-bodied, childless, working-age Ohioans on Medicaid to bring billions in Obamacare money to the state. Enrollment in Ohio’s Medicaid expansion was 33 percent higher than projected after just one year.
Kasich claims he opposes Obamacare, but 68 percent of the Ohioans covered under Obamacare are enrolled through the optional Obamacare Medicaid expansion he implemented unilaterally.
After dramatically underestimating 2014 enrollment in Kasich’s Obamacare expansion, Ohio State University researchers issued a revised projection of 703,667 for fiscal 2017. Using OSU’s enrollment projection and Ohio’s Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee's upper-bound figure, Ohio taxpayers would be on the hook for $248 million in 2017.
For more information, go to http://watchdog.org/201958/obamacare-ohio-taxpayers/
Jason Hart is Watchdog.org's Ohio-based National Labor Reporter. Contact him at jhart@watchdog.org and follow him on Twitter @jasonahart.