Though Governor Bentley continues to hold the line on not expanding Medicaid under Obamacare, there has been a concerted effort by special interest groups and left-leaning editorial writers recently to pressure the Governor to change his mind.
Advocates of big government solutions to healthcare issues have even trumpeted Medicaid expansion as a potential economic and fiscal boon to the state. In 2012, UAB released a study claiming that expanding Medicaid would bring billions of dollars into the state through the federal subsidy that would pay the majority of patient costs. Alabama’s liberals have touted the study as irrefutable evidence in favor of expanding an inefficient and ineffective government program.
Needless to say, the study, which Gov. Bentley called “bogus,” has some serious flaws.
Alabama already had to fill a $100 million hole during the budgeting process last year, even though Alabama’s employment and economy has recovered more quickly than most of the rest of the country. Just the additional administrative costs alone that would be brought on by expanding Medicaid would create an incredible new burden on the Alabama state government. Even the UAB study admits that the state would be responsible for approximately an additional $771 million between 2014-20.
But here are a couple of things the UAB study refuses to admit.
First of all, the UAB study fails to convey the simple reality that there is no such thing as free money. The money the study purports Alabama would gain from expanding Medicaid is actually money that would be deducted from our paychecks, and the rest of it is borrowed money that must eventually be repaid by future generations.
In addition to that, expanding Medicaid under Obamacare would only further tie Alabama to the most economically catastrophic law in recent memory.
A report released last week by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shines even more light on the economic destruction that could be wrought by further participation in the law. The report reveals that 2.3 million Americans could leave the workforce in the next decade because of Obamacare. Proportionally, this could translate to a 2.8 percent increase in the Alabama unemployment rate. That’s around 55,000 Alabamians without employment, just from this one aspect of the law. Supposing all of these 55,000 earn the average per capita income of $23,587 in Alabama, that’s a $1.3 billion hit to the Alabamian economy.
Does that sound like economic growth to you?
