There’s a new study on the economic impact of states declining to take advantage of the federal dollars that come with a Medicaid expansion…and the news is not good for them.
States that choose not to expand Medicaid under federal health care reform will leave millions of their residents without health insurance and increase spending, at least in the short term, on the cost of treating uninsured residents, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
If 14 states decide not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act as intended by their governors, those state governments collectively will spend $1 billion more on uncompensated care in 2016 than they would if Medicaid is expanded.
In addition, those 14 state governments would forgo $8.4 billion annually in federal payments and an additional 3.6 million people will be left uninsured, according to findings published in the June edition of the journal Health Affairs.
“Our analysis shows it’s in the best economic interests of states to expand Medicaid under the terms of the federal Affordable Care Act,” said Carter Price, the study’s lead author and a mathematician at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.
Missouri’s state legislature refused to move on Medicaid expansion during the just-completed legislative session. Not only did that leave uninsured Missourians high and dry, as this study shows, we’ll all pay a price. Read the RAND press release, as well as the full study, here.