{"id":17369,"date":"2013-03-05T13:18:55","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T18:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=17369"},"modified":"2013-03-05T13:18:55","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T18:18:55","slug":"pennsylvania-next-medicaid-expansion-domino-to-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/17369\/pennsylvania-next-medicaid-expansion-domino-to-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania Next Medicaid Expansion Domino to Fall?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pennsylvania Republican Governor Tom Corbett may be wavering on his refusal to expand Medicaid<\/a> under ObamaCare\u2019s bait-and-switch funding scheme.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t envy him.\u00a0 He\u2019s surrounded by states like Ohio and New Jersey, whose GOP governors opted to indulge the fantasy that they can accept the federal government\u2019s promise of full funding at face value.<\/p>\n

To his credit, Corbett isn\u2019t allowing himself to act like there are no costs associated with agreeing to so-called “free” Medicaid expansion for the next three years.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s some refreshing honesty<\/a> from Corbett\u2019s spokeswoman Christine Cronkright:<\/p>\n

The Corbett administration has estimated that participating in the Medicaid expansion that would add 800,000 people to medical assistance would cost Pennsylvania $1 billion through 2014-15 and a total of $4.1 billion. Advocates maintain that the Medicaid expansion would pay the way for $43 billion in federal contributions, beginning with three years in which the federal government would pay 100 percent of the expansion.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of the federal government\u2019s claims, the presumption that they will cover 100 percent of the costs of full expansion is simply not true.\u00a0Regardless of any other costs under the (Affordable Care Act) that we\u2019d have to bear, there are still IT and staffing costs, costs for additional clients coming into the system that may have been eligible before, and costs for those we believe will drop employer-based coverage,\u201d Cronkright said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So it turns out “free” really means $1-4 billion.<\/p>\n

The simple truth about ObamaCare\u2019s Medicaid expansion is that it establishes a one-way street toward greater federal intervention in every individual\u2019s health care decisions. Democrats know this, and are using the \u201cfree\u201d money trope to lure weak-willed Republicans into a federally-dominated system from which a state will not be able to extract itself.<\/p>\n

GOP governors who agree to expansion and believe that they will have the political support to simply cut off access to Medicaid when the feds pull back funding are deluding themselves. Besides, what kind of leadership is it to support welfare expansion on the condition that someone else pays for it with their debt-laden credit card<\/em>?<\/p>\n

So far, Governor Corbett is standing firm in the face of tremendous opposition to fiscal sanity.\u00a0 Let\u2019s hope he continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pennsylvania Republican Governor Tom Corbett may be wavering on his refusal to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare\u2019s bait-and-switch funding scheme. I don\u2019t envy him.\u00a0 He\u2019s surrounded by states like Ohio and New Jersey, whose GOP governors opted to indulge the fantasy that they can accept the federal government\u2019s promise of full funding at face value. To […]<\/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":[70,59,3308,232,35,1085,61,3873],"class_list":["post-17369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-budget","tag-deficit","tag-health","tag-medicaid","tag-obamacare","tag-pennsylvania","tag-spending","tag-tom-corbett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17369","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=17369"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17373,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17369\/revisions\/17373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}