President Obama’s recent remarks surrounding the commitment to Americans the promise of lower insurance premiums for healthcare access are all over the news and healthcare blogosphere this morning. The interested reader and health policy wonk also can’t avoid the latest goings on with Medicare legislation. But what about Medicaid? Obscured by concerns of healthcare providers’ battles with looming cuts to Medicare and patients’ bills of rights in their tussles with Insurance; the fears many states have with changes to Medicaid policy in lieu of reform are just as newsworthy.

A think tank’s new study sheds some light on this potentially incendiary issue: Medicaid is the prime payer of long term care (LTC) healthcare delivery in this country. Many states are concerned that Medicaid costs as a percentage of state budgets will nearly double by 2030, from the current 20 percent to 35 percent in some states. In some cases, costs can triple. LTC accounts for about a quarter of that expense. All the talk about the disappearance of patients from physicians’ Medicare rolls may be just the iceberg’s tip. Companies could be forced to jettison Medicaid beneficiaries; proposals to tax some healthcare and health plans to curb Medicaid cost increases are even on the table. As states’ problems with unemployment grow (here in MN, it’s at a ‘moderate’ 7 percent), Medicaid-related healthcare expense continues to increase in tandem. Not a rosy outlook at all. | PDF LINK

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