Published on June 30, 2012 at 9:12 AM
The Fiscal Times: Will States Opt Out Of Medicaid Expansion?
Now states are facing another crossroads in the evolution of the program, assuming the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, politically survives beyond the fall elections. The Supreme Court on Thursday reaffirmed the right of states to reject expanding Medicaid to cover poor-but-working adults and prohibited the federal government from withdrawing support for other parts of the program to penalize non-participation. Some states are already planning to ignore the coverage expansion offer when it goes into effect in 2014 (Goozner, 6/28).
CQ HealthBeat: States With Largest Uninsured Populations May Be More Likely To Opt Out Of Medicaid
Any states that choose to follow the Supreme Court's ruling and opt out of the health care law's Medicaid expansion are likely to be those with a larger population of uninsured and poor people, experts said. But doing so would mean refusing huge sums of federal money, which could be difficult for most states to do (Reichard, 6/28).
Stateline: Court Lets States Opt Of Medicaid Expansion
But in declaring the health law constitutional, the justices also limited the federal government's power to compel states to expand their Medicaid programs. That is likely to change the course of the law's implementation in much of the country…The court ruled that if a state chooses not to participate in the Medicaid expansion, the federal government can withdraw only funds specifically targeted to the expansion. It cannot take away existing Medicaid funds (Vestal, 6/28).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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