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Summary: The Medicaid Expansion

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"We don't believe it’s right and we know it's going to basically bankrupt the states."(Hensley 2012) quote given from Texas Governor Rick Perry about Medicaid expanding in Texas. The Medicaid expansion "would simply enlarge a broken system that is already financially unsustainable," he wrote. "Expanding it as the PPACA provides would only exacerbate the failure of the current system, and would threaten even Texas with financial ruin." (Hensley 2012). Texas is among the twenty-two states that did not expand Medicaid, and for good reason at that. The provisions of free medical services to those of low income has become a central component of the package of incentives for the poor in the U.S. for over the last twenty years. (Wolfe and Moffitt …show more content…

(Owcharenko 2013) Yet, that couldn’t be further from the truth. This would actually make the state spend money that they would’ve spent on something else, or wouldn’t have spent at all. (Owcharenko, 2013) Another is that they claim that rejecting expansion would mean that other states would get more, when actually that Medicaid is a calculated formula based on actual expenditures. (Owcharenko, 2013) The fewer states that expand, the less the federal government spends. (Owcharenko 2013) Deciding and fully committing to expansion can be a real predicament for the states. (Owcharenko, 2013) To regulate spending, states normally fall on usual techniques to manage cost. (Owcharenko, 2013) As Medicaid spending continues to rise, other important state priorities such as education, emergency services, transportation, and criminal justice are squeezed. (Owcharenko, 2013). If states resist balancing among spending programs, the alternative is generating more revenues with tax increases. (Foster) But higher taxes come with a steep price: They reduce economic growth, which with most states still experiencing anemic growth, tax increases on top of already higher taxes at the federal level are not an appealing option.

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