More Ohioans applied for Medicaid on December 9 than selected Obamacare “Health Insurance Marketplace” plans through the entire month of October, based on figures released yesterday by the Ohio Department of Medicaid.
“A total of 1,165 needy Ohioans had submitted applications for health benefits through the state’s new online Medicaid system as of midafternoon Monday, the first day the website (www.benefits.ohio.gov) began accepting enrollments.” Marc Kovac reported in The Youngstown Vindicator.
In November, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released data showing that during the disastrous first month of the Obamacare exchanges at HealthCare.gov, only 1,150 Ohioans selected plans on the national Health Insurance Marketplace.
The surge of Medicaid sign-ups in Ohio is a result of two policies: Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty, which is causing a “woodwork effect” of previously eligible Ohioans entering the program, and Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which makes hundreds of thousands of able-bodied childless adults eligible for Medicaid.
Governor John Kasich embraced the Obamacare Medicaid expansion and unilaterally enacted it after the Ohio General Assembly replaced Kasich’s proposal in the biennial budget with language explicitly forbidding the expansion.
Now, figures from HHS and the state Medicaid department confirm that Obamacare has been “successful” in Ohio only in terms of pushing more Americans into the broken, unsustainable Medicaid program.
Cato Institute health policy expert Michael Tanner described the situation as “a Medicaid time bomb” in a December 7 New York Post column.
“The Congressional Budget Office projects that, in part because of ObamaCare, Medicaid spending will more than double over the next 10 years, topping $554 billion by 2023,” Tanner wrote. “And that is just federal spending.”
“State governments pay another $160 billion for Medicaid today,” Tanner added. “For most states, Medicaid is the single-largest cost of government, crowding out education, transportation and everything else.”
In Ohio, the Obamacare expansion is expected to add over $600,000,000 per year in new Medicaid costs by 2022. State costs will be even greater when mathematics intrude on the federal government’s impossible promise to pay for 90 percent of states’ expansion costs forever.
With help from Foundation for Government Accountability and Cato’s Michael Cannon, The Buckeye Institute, Opportunity Ohio, and Media Trackers called attention to this and myriad other issues with Medicaid expansion as Gov. Kasich fought to ram the policy through the state legislature.
Falsely framing billions in new HHS spending as “Ohio’s tax dollars,” Kasich dismissed all dissent while working with the entitlement lobby to grow government.
For his support of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, the Republican governor has received acclaim from President Obama and other leading champions of the 2010 health law. Kasich nonetheless insists the Obamacare expansion is separate from Obamacare.
“Conservatives all oppose Obamacare and Ohio’s Republican leaders have helped lead that opposition,” Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges said on October 11 — the same day the Kasich Administration submitted a request for the Ohio Controlling Board to appropriate billions in Obamacare funding.
“On the separate matter of Medicaid, good conservatives have worked to make the program better and engage in a healthy debate on its future,” Borges continued.
Cross-posted from the archived Media Trackers Ohio site.