{"id":17272,"date":"2013-02-23T19:02:43","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T00:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=17272"},"modified":"2013-02-25T15:28:12","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T20:28:12","slug":"floridas-rick-scott-joins-dark-side-on-medicaid-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/17272\/floridas-rick-scott-joins-dark-side-on-medicaid-expansion\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Joins Dark Side on Medicaid Expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

With all due respect to Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy<\/a>, and as a fan of his website I mean that sincerely, I couldn\u2019t disagree more with his defense of Florida Governor Rick Scott\u2019s decision to accept ObamaCare\u2019s Medicaid expansion.<\/p>\n

Like other Republican governors<\/a> who\u2019ve flipped on the issue, Scott announced last week that even though he remains philosophically opposed to ObamaCare, he would accept at least the law\u2019s Medicaid expansion for the next three years because federal taxpayers \u2013 not the state \u2013 would pick up the entire price tag.\u00a0 Like many of the other capitulators, Scott claims that because the Supreme Court ruled ObamaCare constitutional, it doesn\u2019t make financial sense for Florida residents to pay for ObamaCare through fees and penalties while other Medicaid-expanding states reap a windfall.<\/p>\n

Ruddy defends Scott\u2019s about-face with two arguments I don\u2019t find compelling.<\/p>\n

The first:<\/p>\n

Scott has also made it clear that he has not agreed to continue the Medicaid expansion beyond three years, when federal funding will drop to 90 percent, and Florida could opt out at that point.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let\u2019s get real.\u00a0 Once a state accepts more federal dollars and grows a politically sensitive program like Medicaid, the trend is to grow, not cut back.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Scott\u2019s calculation betrays a canny reading of the political calendar.\u00a0 He\u2019s up for reelection in November 2014, but will get credit for expanding Medicaid at no cost to state taxpayers in January of that year.\u00a0 If successful in his bid, Scott can continue to enjoy favorable press until January 2017 when the federal largesse starts receding and Floridians start feeling the cost of all that \u201cfree\u201d healthcare.\u00a0 But by the time that happens Scott will be wrapping up his second term, and handing off that political football to a predecessor.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to Ruddy\u2019s other unpersuasive argument:<\/p>\n

So governors like Scott and [Arizona\u2019s Jan] Brewer have to put aside their personal views and accept the reality of the situation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since when do conviction conservatives want one of their own \u2013 as the Tea Party-backed Rick Scott claimed to be in 2010 \u2013 to \u201cput aside their personal views\u201d in favor of growing government?<\/p>\n

The \u201creality of the situation\u201d with ObamaCare\u2019s Medicaid expansion is that it\u2019s completely<\/em> voluntary.\u00a0 Any governor that accepts its terms is intentionally saddling his or her state\u2019s future taxpayers with a costly new entitlement that will be impossible to scale back through the political process.<\/p>\n

After all, if politicians like Scott can\u2019t weather the storm of saying no to entitlement increases when they don\u2019t even exist, how does it pass the laugh test to think he\u2019ll have the political courage to scale back when the feds re-impose reality?<\/p>\n

To be fair, Ruddy isn\u2019t alone trying to defend the indefensible.\u00a0 Charles Krauthammer<\/a> is singing a similar tune.\u00a0 But again, with all due respect, it\u2019s just not true that you can claim to be a fiscal conservative and then capitulate on something as basic as a budget-busting expansion of Medicaid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With all due respect to Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy, and as a fan of his website I mean that sincerely, I couldn\u2019t disagree more with his defense of Florida Governor Rick Scott\u2019s decision to accept ObamaCare\u2019s Medicaid expansion. Like other Republican governors who\u2019ve flipped on the issue, Scott announced last week that even though he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2136,354,232,35,1447,2376,61],"class_list":["post-17272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-entitlement","tag-florida","tag-medicaid","tag-obamacare","tag-reform","tag-rick-scott","tag-spending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17272"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17282,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17272\/revisions\/17282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}