Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Medicaid reaches historic proportions
[Dennis Cauchon, "Medicaid insures historic number," USA TODAY, 1 August 2005.]
USA Today calls attention to the incredible growth of Medicaid nationally in this recent article:
The nation has so vastly extended taxpayer-funded Medicaid to the working poor this decade that it has produced the biggest expansion of a government entitlement since the Great Society was launched in the 1960s, a USA TODAY analysis has found.
With little notice, the medical care program paid by federal and state taxpayers has grown from covering 34 million people in 1999 to 47 million in 2004, an examination of government data shows.
Today, a family of four can earn as much as $40,000 a year in most states and get government health insurance for children. The nation's median household income was $43,318 in 2003, the Census Bureau says.
Medicaid spending grew from $159 billion in 1997 to $295 billion in 2004. That 85% increase is nearly twice the rise in Medicare, which insures seniors. Washington pays 59% of Medicaid's cost; states pay the rest.
Critics of Medicaid's expansion say it is adding to the federal budget deficit - $412 billion in 2004 - and luring people from employer-offered insurance.
"Shame on us for creating perverse incentives that cause people to give up private coverage for Medicaid," says Michael Cannon, director of health care studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.
[Matthew Hisrich, "Medicaid could swamp state budget," The Wichita Eagle, 26 July 2005.]
[Dennis Cauchon, "Medicaid insures historic number," USA TODAY, 1 August 2005.]
USA Today calls attention to the incredible growth of Medicaid nationally in this recent article:
The nation has so vastly extended taxpayer-funded Medicaid to the working poor this decade that it has produced the biggest expansion of a government entitlement since the Great Society was launched in the 1960s, a USA TODAY analysis has found.
With little notice, the medical care program paid by federal and state taxpayers has grown from covering 34 million people in 1999 to 47 million in 2004, an examination of government data shows.
Today, a family of four can earn as much as $40,000 a year in most states and get government health insurance for children. The nation's median household income was $43,318 in 2003, the Census Bureau says.
Medicaid spending grew from $159 billion in 1997 to $295 billion in 2004. That 85% increase is nearly twice the rise in Medicare, which insures seniors. Washington pays 59% of Medicaid's cost; states pay the rest.
Critics of Medicaid's expansion say it is adding to the federal budget deficit - $412 billion in 2004 - and luring people from employer-offered insurance.
"Shame on us for creating perverse incentives that cause people to give up private coverage for Medicaid," says Michael Cannon, director of health care studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.
[Matthew Hisrich, "Medicaid could swamp state budget," The Wichita Eagle, 26 July 2005.]
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