The Inconvenient Truths of Louisiana’s Medicaid Expansion
In the wake of a wave of stories about the tens of thousands of ineligible individuals who received Medicaid benefits, supporters keep trying to defend Louisiana’s expansion of Medicaid to the able-bodied. But their defenses ignore several inconvenient truths.
First, money doesn’t grow on trees. Health Secretary Rebekah Gee recently claimed that Louisiana’s “Medicaid expansion comes at no additional cost to taxpayers.” Because she believes the federal government will pay all the cost of Medicaid expansion, she thinks Louisiana taxpayers are “off the hook” for the program’s spending. But anyone who had to mail a check to the Internal Revenue Service on April 15 would disagree. By definition, any new government spending imposes a cost to taxpayers, because Louisiana residents pay taxes to Washington just like everyone else.
And Louisiana has seen a ton of new government spending due to Medicaid expansion. In 2015, the Legislative Fiscal Office projected spending on expansion to total $1.2 billion-$1.4 billion per year. In the last fiscal year, Louisiana spent nearly $3.1 billion on expansion—or more than double the Fiscal Office’s original estimates.
Second, the truly vulnerable continue to get overlooked due to Medicaid expansion. Secretary Gee claimed that her “top priority is to ensure every dollar spent [on Medicaid] goes towards providing health care to people who need it most.” But Louisiana still has tens of thousands of individuals with disabilities on waiting lists for home and community-based services—who are not getting the care they need, because Louisiana has focused on expanding Medicaid to the able-bodied.
Since Louisiana expanded Medicaid in July 2016, at least 5,534 Louisiana residents with disabilities have died—yes, died—while on waiting lists for Medicaid to care for their personal needs. Louisiana should have placed the needs of these vulnerable patients ahead of expanding coverage to able-bodied adults—tens of thousands of whom already had private health insurance and dropped that insurance to enroll in Medicaid expansion.
This skewed sense of priorities pervades supporters of Medicaid expansion. One recently claimed that most of the individuals improperly enrolled in expansion “are poor, but not poor enough to qualify for coverage” under Medicaid.
The Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s report suggests otherwise. The 100 Medicaid recipients studied by the auditor, 93 of whom did not qualify for benefits for at least one month they received them, had an average—repeat, average—household income of $67,742. Fourteen of the recipients reported income of over $100,000. One recipient reported income of $145,146—well above Governor John Bel Edwards’ annual salary of $130,000.
The Louisiana Department of Health recently acknowledged that at least 1,672 individuals receiving over $100,000 qualified for Medicaid benefits. Supporters of Medicaid expansion can claim that these six-figure Medicaid beneficiaries classify as “poor,” but hardworking taxpayers forced to foot the bill for these recipients would likely disagree.
Louisiana taxpayers deserve policies that prioritize the most vulnerable in society—individuals with disabilities currently dying on waiting lists—rather than funding benefits for enrollees with six-figure incomes, or able-bodied adults who dropped their private coverage to enroll in Medicaid. They deserve more than claims that money grows on trees, or that expanding dependency will lead to growth and prosperity. They deserve better than Medicaid expansion’s failed status quo.
This post was originally published in the Daily Advertiser.