Mead’s Latest Medicaid Gambit

by Charles Katebi

No single provision of Obamacare has been more disastrous than Medicaid Expansion. It's cost taxpayers billions more than promised and hurt the very people it was intended to help. Now Governor Mead wants to try yet again to expand this ruinous government program in Wyoming.

Following an event at an oil recovery facility in Riverton, Mead commented:

"I think it's appropriate for members of [the Joint Appropriations Committee] and the Legislature, as a whole, to take a look at [Medicaid Expansion] and see if we want to again forgo that money during these tough budget times."

The Governor could not be more wrong.

For starters, Medicaid Expansion won't save Wyoming money; it only creates new expensive promises. For Wyoming to receive Medicaid Expansion dollars, we would have to open the program to individuals making up to $16,000 every year and families making $30,000. The government estimates that 17,000 new individuals will enroll.

However, just about every state has wildly underestimated how many people will actually sign-up. The Foundation for Government Accountability analyzed enrollment numbers of 17 states that expanded Medicaid and found that nearly twice as many people registered than government analysts predicted. In the case of Colorado, three times as many people enrolled than expected. If Wyoming's estimates are as off as Colorado's, taxpayers would be on the hook for 52,000 new Medicaid patients.

Medicaid's exploding enrollment numbers also mean exploding costs. Kentucky signed up 221,000 more individuals than anticipated. Now their Medicaid program is projected to be $1.5 billion over budget. Illinois initially projected 342,000 new individuals signing up through Medicaid Expansion. By April over 633,671 had enrolled and will cost $2 billion more.

What's even more absurd is that Governor Mead wants to expand Medicaid when Wyoming faces a severe budget crisis. Wyoming relies heavily on tax revenue from the minerals industry to finance government programs. Over the last several years, the price of minerals fell precipitously. As a result, Wyoming's Consensus Revenue Estimating Group (CREG) estimates in its January revenue forecast that mineral tax revenue will fall by $250 million over the 2015-2016 Biennium. Wyoming simply does not have the resources to expand Medicaid when it cannot even finance its current obligations.

At a time when Wyoming faces severe belt tightening, can Governor Mead in good faith promise healthcare to tens of thousands of new beneficiaries? In a word: No. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Wyoming's Medicaid program reimburses doctors 76 percent above the national average. This largess is no doubt thanks to the severance tax bonanza. Those days are over. If Mead successfully expands Medicaid, the program will likely cut its payments to doctors because it won't have the funds it had when mineral revenue was pouring in.

Hospitals in expansion states are already buckling under Medicaid's mounting costs. Because the program pays doctors so little, Michael Kasser of Southern Illinois Healthcare reported that his hospital group lost $14 million treating Medicaid's new patients. As Medicaid foists ever mounting losses on providers, patients will be deprived of the very care the program was meant to provide.

Medicaid has demonstrated time and again that it is a disaster for patients and a fiscal nightmare for taxpayers. Rather than trying to expand a broken program, the government must get out of the way of doctors, hospitals and private charities and allow them to aid society's most vulnerable.