“ObamaCare’s Medicaid Deception,” by Brian Blase and Aaron Yelowitz, Wall Street Journal

“ObamaCare wasn’t supposed to give free health insurance to everybody. The Affordable Care Act’s authors expected the poor would enroll in Medicaid, while those with higher incomes would buy coverage through the new insurance exchanges, with subsidies that decrease as income rises. It isn’t working. A study published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that in several Medicaid-expansion states most people who gained coverage have enrolled in Medicaid regardless of their income. In practice, ObamaCare has turned Medicaid into an entitlement program for the middle class. … These findings should alarm Americans across the political spectrum. They show that complicated government programs often bear little resemblance to planners’ designs. ObamaCare has turned out to be a giant welfare program, with millions of working- and middle-class Americans improperly receiving Medicaid—a reflection of the unpopularity of the exchange policies and incompetence of government oversight.”

 

LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform):

Sound familiar? Medicaid for long-term care has operated as a middle-class entitlement for half a century. Now add acute care to the mix. We can fix both if policymakers heed this groundbreaking research.