Seeking To Encourage Medicaid Expansion, Administration Considers Market-Based Options

Compromise out of desperation

The Obama administration appears ready to allow Arkansas — and a handful of other states — to pursue a market-based approach to fund health care for the poor in place of conventional Medicaid expansion under the new federal health care law.

An announcement from the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services spells out exactly what states need to do to qualify.

Called "premium assistance," the alternative plan would allow states to use federal Medicaid money to buy private insurance for low-income people from new state or federal health insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act. HHS said it would "consider approving a limited number of premium assistance demonstrations" as a way to test how well they work in the real world.

Comments

[Scarecrow Repair]

I cannot get over how much they hate markets but how far they will go to crudely simulate them with their maze of regulations. Why would any thinking person want to put so much effort into such a mess when the natural system does it all on its own, better, faster, cheaper, more innovative, more productive?

That's what it takes to remind me that these people's thinking consists only of ways to expand the bureaucracy.

I just cannot imagine how dull my brain would have to be to tolerate such a life, let alone actively expand it.