When the Georgia Legislature convenes on Monday, some may push to have the state follow North Carolina in implementing Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to able-bodied adults. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently reported that lawmakers “are giving a fresh look” to full expansion, after a more limited Medicaid extension took effect last year.
But the hospital lobbyists trying to generate momentum behind the effort are doing so by promoting an option that government auditors have already decried as a boondoggle — one that would waste federal taxpayer dollars, in Georgia’s case by siphoning billions from Washington. Just as important, the energies of these well-heeled special interests distract from where the Peach State’s health care priorities should lie.
Hospital Lobbyists Seek Inflated Reimbursements
On its face, a traditional Medicaid expansion might make little financial difference to hospitals, because Medicaid pays paltry reimbursement rates that in many cases are below facilities’ costs. A September 2016 working paper by the Congressional Budget Office projecting facilities’ revenue margins found that “in most cases the additional revenue from the Medicaid expansion is not sufficient to change those hospitals’ margins from negative to positive.”
The Journal-Constitution reports that industry leaders have proposed an alternative. A lobbyist for Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital is advocating an expansion proposal similar to that adopted by Arkansas — a “‘tailored Medicaid waiver’ … that provides commercial insurance reimbursement rates while staying budget neutral.”
Not Nearly ‘Budget Neutral‘
Both the lobbyist and the Journal-Constitution neglected to omit an important fact: In 2014, the Government
