It’s easy to determine the winners and losers of any government scheme — just follow the money:
The winners of ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion are able-bodied, working-age adults; almost all of whom (82%) have no children to support, nearly half of whom (45%) do not work at all and many of whom (35%) with a record of run-ins with the criminal justice system. The losers when it comes to ObamaCare expansion are the vulnerable people Medicaid was created to protect—low-income kids, poor moms, the elderly, the blind and the disabled.
“Nothing is fair or compassionate about how ObamaCare expansion treats the truly vulnerable patients relying on Medicaid to survive,” explained FGA Director of Research Jonathan Ingram. “ObamaCare fast-tracks the Medicaid expansion population of working-age, able-bodied childless adults to the front of the line while it cuts the Medicaid safety net out from under the patients who need it most.”
The federal government has promised states that expand Medicaid eligibility under ObamaCare to pay the full cost of the expansion through 2016 then ratchet its share down to 90% by 2020. This funding promise is only made for the Medicaid expansion population. There is no change in federal funding for currently-eligible patients, which stands today at an average 57%. Put simply, Medicaid expansion states will receive substantially more federal funding for working-age, able-bodied childless adults than they will for truly vulnerable patients.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the childless, able-bodied unemployed tend to be a Democrat constituency. Besides, breadwinning parents are probably just bitter clingers, anyway.
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