Carnuccio: Just Say No
Free Market Friday: Just say no
By Michael C. Carnuccio, Guest Columnist
More than 20 other states have rejected Medicaid expansion, thereby preventing half a trillion dollars in deficit spending that our kids and grandkids would have had to pay.
Keep in mind, what began as a $1 billion national entitlement in 1966 is projected to hit $900 billion by 2020. In terms of future costs, Matt Salo, the executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, noted in testimony: “More people show up than you think will show up, and the people that show up are sicker than you expected.” Even if the debt-ridden federal government keeps its commitment to fund expansion at 90 percent, Oklahoma’s 10-percent share is of an unknown number. That blank check is uncontrollable and unpredictable, no matter what expansionists say.
Every future state tax dollar spent on Medicaid expansion is a dollar that must be taken from Oklahomans and cannot be spent on other priorities like educating our kids. Americans now spend more on Medicaid than on making sure our children can compete in the 21st century. Expanding Medicaid will inflate that spending differential even more and swallow other spending priorities as well.
It’s hard to compete with the campaign funding from the Hospital Industrial Complex, the emotional appeal of liberal-progressives, the bully pulpit shape-shifting Republicans, and the collective adoration of the mainstream media to expand Medicaid. However, today’s lawmakers did not run for elected office so they could expand one of the largest federal entitlement programs in existence that already costs too much and gets mediocre to poor results for current recipients.