Well, there's more to that than meets the eye, as there so often is with our current ruling class, and the New York Times tells us that some states are going to be mired even more in deep debt:
In California, policymakers estimate they will have to come up with an additional $500 million a year to make necessary increases in payments to Medicaid providers.
Across the country, state officials are wading through the minutiae of the health care overhaul to understand just how their governments will be affected. Even with much still to be digested, it is clear the law may be as much of a burden to some state budgets as it is a boon to uninsured consumers.
States with the largest uninsured populations, like Texas and California, might be considered by its backers the biggest winners to emerge from the law, because so many additional residents will have access to health insurance. But because those states are being required to significantly expand their Medicaid programs, they are precisely the ones that will face the biggest financial strains, in many cases magnified by existing budget shortfalls.
Let's remember that the NYT isn't known for publishing Republican talking points.
Oh.
ReplyDeleteYou mean all this healthcare isn't free? I thought it was free and that evil capitalists were paying for it. But I guess that's okay because we will be getting services like tomorrow, right?
Physicians are already losing money treating Medicare and Medicaid patients; a practice with too many can't survive, which is why practices are either dropping those patients or not accepting new ones. Those greedy doctors have to pay their office rent, utilities, staff (whose insurance costs may have gone up 45% for next year), equipment, supplies, malpractice insurance (no tort reform in the bill), professional fees, continuing education, college/med school loans etc.
ReplyDeleteEveryone may have insurance, but they won't get care because practices can't afford to provide it. It's called rationing and all government-funded entities have been doing it for years; VA, Indian Health, military hospitals etc. If you can't get an appointment, you don't get care.
Best quote ever about health care by P J O'Rourke: "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free." The state of California is about to find out.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet our elected representatives decided that we needed this. Way to go there, Congressmorons--don't let the door hit you on the way out in November...
ReplyDeleteIs this one of those trivia questions? I know the answer.
ReplyDeleteWe'll apply one bandaid solution after another hoping someone, sometime in the future will find a solution to the problem they've been handed, knowing they won't and can't.