States and Medicaid Expansion

Posted on January 18, 2013 by townsend

• Will Ohio Gov. John Kasich expand Medicaid? ‘Too important to leave hanging’, By Sarah Jane Tribble, January 13, 2013, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “For Ohio’s health care industry and patient advocates, all eyes are on Gov. John Kasich and the two-year state budget he’s expected to propose on Feb. 4. Will the Republican state leader expand Medicaid and offer government-supported health insurance to an estimated additional 600,000 of the state’s poorest? ‘We will all know together,’ said Greg Moody, the leader of Kasich’s office of health transformation, which is charged with revamping the state’s Medicaid program. Moody declined on January 9 to provide any hint as to the administration’s decision, but he did say an answer will be in the budget. If the expansion is in the proposed budget, the plan will still have to be approved by state legislators. If it is not included in the budget, political experts say expansion would be very unlikely…”
• Easiest path to mental health funding may be Medicaid expansion, By Michael Ollove, January 18, 2013, Stateline: “The recent mass killings in Tucson, Aurora and Newtown have sparked public conversations about the deficiencies in state-run mental health systems across the United States. But few states are poised to spend their own money to reverse as much as a decade of budget cutbacks in those areas. Instead, many of them are counting on an infusion of federal mental-health dollars. Because Medicaid includes mental-health benefits, those states that opt into the Medicaid expansion included in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act will be able to make mental health coverage available to thousands of their citizens who do not now have it. For the first three years that additional coverage would cost the states nothing: Under terms of the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will cover 100 percent of the costs of new Medicaid enrollees for the first three years and 90 percent after 2020…”