Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Democrat Health “Reform:” Higher Costs, Higher Spending

The Washington Examiner reports this morning that Virginia has raised its estimate of the health care law’s unfunded mandate costs on the Commonwealth by nearly 40 percent, to a whopping $1.5 billion. The estimated costs for the expansion of Virginia’s Medicaid program come at a time when Democrats are negotiating behind closed doors on “extenders” legislation, which would provide nearly $25 billion in (unpaid-for) federal assistance to states for their Medicaid programs in the coming fiscal year.

These developments raise two important questions: If states can’t afford their Medicaid programs now, how will they be able to afford the addition of 16 million more individuals on to the Medicaid rolls in just a few years time? And how does adding more people into a broken Medicaid system—that neither states nor the federal government can afford—constitute “reform?”