4/ accessHealthnews.net Winter 2014
300,000 Left Behind
Medicaid Expansion Advocates Look to 2015
By Tonia Wright (Continued from page 1)
pay six percent of costs and in
2019, seven percent and from
2020 on, states' responsibility
would cap at 10 percent.
Hembree said that the added costs
for Missouri would level out as
some of the safety net programs
it currently pays for, like mental
health for instance, would now be
covered through the expansion.
Additional tax revenue would
come to the state through income
taxes generated by a more robust
health care force.
The numbers alone paint a clear
picture. A recent article in the
Kansas City Business Journal talks
about how for profit hospitals are
faring in states that expanded
Medicaid. In short, hospitals saw
a decrease in uninsured patients
and an increase in Medicaid
patients.
A PricewaterhouseCoopers report
revealed that HCA "revised its
earnings outlook to account for
better-than-expected revenue
from health reform." However, the
health care system did not
disclose actual numbers.
Tenet, a Dallas-based health care
system that operates in five states
with expanded Medicaid, saw a
$78 million reduction in unpaid
care in the second quarter alone,
according the report. However,
according to the RWJF, hospitals
in non-expansion states are set to
lose $167.8 billion in Medicaid
revenue between 2013 and 2022.
That includes $2.6 billion in
Kansas and $6.8 billion in Missouri.
"I anticipate that if we continue to
play politics with this issue longer,
at the end, everybody is going to
hurt—not just people who could
have benefited from Medicaid
expansion, but everybody in a
community who counts on their
local hospital, clinic, physician or
nurse is going to feel the impact.
There are empty medical offices
throughout rural Missouri today…I
anticipate that that's only going to
increase the longer we drag our
feet," Pierle said.
