Government Healthcare Policy, Business and Technology

GOP's Medicaid Strategy: Boost Spending Now, Slash the Program Later?

Governing: Republicans determined to cut Medicaid may first have to pour more money into it, to keep the peace between Republican governors who expanded health care for low-income people under Obamacare and those who resisted.

It’s all part of the GOP’s long-term plan to dramatically revamp the health care entitlement for the poor in order to cap what they see as runaway federal spending.

But growing the program, even as an act of political expediency, would mark a major break from GOP campaign slogans and conservative orthodoxy on spending.

“Is it possible to avoid a food fight?” said Tom Scully, who ran CMS in the George W. Bush administration. “No. The way to make it equal and fair is to spend more money.”

Medicaid is the nation’s biggest insurance program, covering 69 million people, or more the one in five Americans.

Read article