A key element of the ObamaCare law could reach ballots in at least four states – including the state of Florida – by 2022, which would be a third of the states without expansion.
Mississippi, South Dakota and Wyoming also face state constitutional amendments in the vote to expand Medicaid, the joint federal-state health program for low-income people. In recent years, Medicaid’s voting initiatives have prevailed on the narrowest margins of voters, after state legislatures rejected the idea as too expensive.
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If these four states expanded Medicaid, their budgets would expand by a total of $ 163.3 billion – $ 128 billion from Florida alone – over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the taxation group Foundation for Government Accountability , released last week. It would also add another 2.4 million adults who are physically fit for Medicaid and increase hospital costs by $ 760 million in those states, the report says. The FGA analysis adds that 85,810 individuals – 71,662 from Florida – are already on Medicaid waiting lists in those states.
“We are looking to expand Medicaid lists during a waiting list crisis, when tens of thousands of people with chronic conditions and severe disabilities died waiting to receive Medicaid coverage,” Hayden Dublois, research analyst at the Foundation for Government Accountability and co -author of the report, told Fox News.
Since 2014, after the initial implementation of the Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare, most state legislatures have taken additional federal dollars and expanded Medicaid to go up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or $ 30,000 for a family. . Previously, the federal program was only available for 100 percent of the poverty level.
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However, after many states exceeded projected enrollments and cost estimates, and hospitals were poorly equipped to provide care, state lawmakers paused and rejected the expansion. Join the movement for voters to do so directly.
“The impact is that elected officials who have access to information and are aware of ancillary benefits compared to tax costs are eliminated when making that decision,” Dublois said.
In Florida, 8% of voters in the previous election must sign a petition for a constitutional amendment proposal to qualify for the vote, which would have 891,589 signatures.
Expansion advocate Florida Decides Healthcare says adding 800,000 Florida residents to Medicaid would be an economic benefit and, indeed, cost savings.
“Increasing demand for healthcare services would create thousands of new jobs in Florida, and the new money spent in our state would boost our economy, benefiting Florida businesses and residents,” says Florida Decides Healthcare.
The group’s website adds: “Instead of focusing on preventive care that saves lives and money, we pay the bill for people who are unable to pay since their medical condition has become fatal and more difficult to treat. unpaid care in our emergency rooms is passed on to taxpayers through state and local government programs and to consumers through higher insurance premiums. “
Florida Decides Healthcare did not answer Fox News’s questions for this story.
The FGA analysis projects 1.9 million new registrants in Florida and estimates that the hospital’s Medicaid deficit in Florida would be $ 727.9 million.
Of the states, Mississippi would see the next biggest impact, with 13,510 on the state’s waiting list, the expansion would add another 358,000 at an estimated cost over the next decade of $ 28 billion, according to the FGA report.
South Dakota would see a 68,000 increase in Medicaid, with an estimated 10-year cost of $ 4.1 billion, according to the FGA report which predicts that Wyoming would see Medicaid inscribed in a 42,000 balloon, costing $ 2, 7 billion in the next decade.
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The group, Dakotans for Health, which is circulating a petition, says the expansion of Medicaid, “will provide medical assistance to those in need but cannot afford it, including many parents, the elderly and working people who earn less than $ 17,000 a year . “
“It will also bring more than $ 300 million of our Washington, DC taxes each year, which will make it possible to provide health insurance to the uninsured, protect our rural hospitals, boost our economy and create thousands of new jobs,” he adds. the South Dakota group.
The Fairness Project, a group that has aided electoral efforts in other red states, is monitoring potential state policies for 2022.
“The expansion of Medicaid is popular across the political spectrum. That is why voters in red states like Oklahoma and Missouri continue to approve it,” said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project, in a statement. “The expansion of Medicaid offers health care to hard-working Americans, returns billions of dollars to states to create jobs and boost the local economy, and often saves state money by reducing other health care costs. It’s a common-sense approach. to expand healthcare where everyone wins. “
Recent successful electoral initiatives in the red states to expand Medicaid came after highly contested elections, notes the FGA report, in which activists voted in the most densely populated regions.
These narrow victories and the lack of consensus across the state are an even greater reason for Dublois to say that electoral initiatives “hijack the legislative process”.
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In 2020, voters in 107 of 116 Missouri counties and major cities rejected the expansion of Medicaid, but prevailed because more than a third of all votes in favor of expansion in the state came from the St. Louis area.
Similarly, last year in Oklahoma, Medicaid’s expansion won by less than 1%, despite losing in 70 of the state’s 77 counties. Of the seven counties that voted for the expansion, the majority did so with less than 2,000 votes.
In 2018, voters in 84 of Nebraska’s 93 counties opposed the expansion, but the expansion still narrowly won.