State budgets are straining nationwide. Healthcare for the poorest citizens (children, the disabled, pregnant females, and poor elderly) and the ability to finance it has always been a political boilerplate, but — in a healthcare economy that will see looming crises in response to expected explosions in many of the the country’s neediest populations in the next 10 years — individual states are trying to get a handle on pre-empting the tsunami of expense.

There is legislative action in Congress that will make it possible to for the Medicaid program to cover nearly 20% (1 in 5) of Americans. Never mind the fact that the government chipped in almost 60% in total costs for Medicaid within the past year; the cost of expansion would mushroom to 90 percent^[1].

When one controls just for these variables, the issues of looming primary care provider shortages (to render the care that will overwhelm potential beneficiaries who sign up as a result of the expansion) and increased administrative costs to cover the expansion on the states’ end have yet to even be considered by many states. Dire, indeed. | LINK

1. The CBO projects states would pay about $33 billion. [↩]

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