The House Health Bill: A Welfare Spending Explosion

Posted October 30th, 2009 at 3.37pm in Health Care.

Members of Congress too often just forget: Medicaid is a welfare program. It is also one of the most poorly performing of all the federal welfare programs. Instead of doing anything innovative or imaginative to fix it, Members of Congress are intent on ramping up Medicaid spending and expanding it. Many currently uninsured Americans are going to be in for a rude surprise when they discover that they won’t be enrolling in superior private health plans, but rather Medicaid, courtesy of the U.S. Congress.

The Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provides insightful data about how the cost of health care will be shifted among the different sources of funding. In an analysis of the House bill (H.R. 3200), the earlier version of the most recent incarnation ( H.R. 3962) , CMS shows that Medicaid spending would surpass Medicare spending, and grow nearly twice as fast as spending in employer sponsored insurance. By 2019, one in five health care dollars will be spent through Medicaid. More than half of all health spending would flow through Medicare, Medicaid, or other public spending in 2019. See chart below.

Author: Dennis Smith
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October 30, 2009 Freedom of Speech, TX writes:

The State Governors (Republican and Democrat) better wake up and REAL fast.

Uncle Stalin (used to be Sam) will neuter the States through Medicaid as the number of people going on the “government option” explodes. For those states who continue to gain illegal immigrants, you’ll have it even worse.

States are naive and foolish if they think the giant Porkster will bypass them on the cash/power menu.

October 30, 2009 Bobbie Jay writes:

these guys are here, there and everywhere. getting into everything they can to mislead, distort, confuse, to create a crisis over. kind of makes the mind wonder how they grew up to hate America so much? they HIDE TO AVOID answering questions. NEWS of a food shortage yet they’ve considered and continue to use corn for biofuel. advertising government paid food programs. forbidding farmers water for crops, all for the upcoming crisis. h1n1 crisis, yet, they’ve advertised American families to foster foreign students? NOTHING LIKE SPREADING IT ALL OVER THE WORLD! …upcoming crisis.
we are deliberately being put in harms way. and our lives are being threatened by this health care and health care insurance take-over.

November 1, 2009 frances r. campbell highland beach florida usa writes:

Why doesn’t the health care crowd who is intent on beggaring the taxpaying public do something about the excesses of medicaid? Will they continue to pay taxi-fare for the indigent? Will they continue to let them hang out in the emergency room for a sore throat or a splinter? They do it because they can. The other day–it was discussed about closing some schools over the epidemic h1n1 virus.. Schools were not closed because sibelius was concerned the children would not be fed if the schools were closed. Our govt has become sugar daddy enabler

November 8, 2009 U.S. House Votes in Favor of Obamacare : Conservative Blog: Urban Conservative 2.0 – Conservative News & Politics writes:

[...] bill engineers a massive expansion of the Medicaid, a welfare program that provides substandard care to lower-income and poor Americans and threatens [...]

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