AdamT
DP Veteran
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- Jul 26, 2011
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No states are seriously going to hold out and NOT agree to the Medicaid expansion. Remember that the Supreme Court made its ruling less than a week ago; the threats to not participate were most likely just some pissed off Republican governors blowing off steam. Any governor would have to be an idiot to not participate in the expansion; they get free federal money for the first couple years, and the federal government still picks up 90% of the tab after the first few years. That's an insanely good deal for the states...and the governors can't really afford NOT to take it. It's an even better deal for the states that already have stingy Medicaid programs (i.e. the red states), because the federal government pays the total cost of bringing them up from wherever they are now, to the new federal level.
Sure, there might be a couple governors in states that really hate Obama who will resist for a couple years. But that won't last long. The voters will force them to participate, and/or the health care providers will lobby them to participate.
Never underestimate the partisan stupidity of a tea party governor, my friend. My governor (Scott of Florida) has ALREADY turned down several billion dollars to build a high speed rail line that was going to require virtually no money from the state. I fully expect him to follow through on his promise to opt out of Medicaid expansion, despite the fact that he is a former hospital corp. executive and knows full well that it would save hospitals billions and billions of dollars. I reckon that by the time he's voted out of office he will have pissed away more federal funding than any governor in history.