It's (past) time to reform Medicaid

If we can't reform this now, we'll never reform anything ever

The Associated Press, in their usual way, injected bias against Medicaid reform into their coverage of potential changes coming from Congress by saying that they could "reduce the number of people with healthcare by 8.6 million over a decade."

The smaller objection is that they picked the worst-case number from a CBO study. The real objection is that these changes don't "reduce the number of people with healthcare." They would reduce the number of people who shouldn't be getting their health insurance (even low-quality insurance) paid for by others.

I'm old enough to remember when Democrats told us that the Clinton-Gingrich welfare reform would lead to people dying in the streets (a claim that was meant literally.) Instead, millions of people got jobs: The Clinton Presidency: Strengthening American Families

How many times will Americans allow Democrats (including AP "journalists") try to scare the nation into keeping millions of people, especially able-bodied people, leeching off other people's labor?

Obamacare incentivized states to massively increase their Medicaid rolls because the left wants people dependent on government, figuring (and not without some reason) that those people are likely to become permanent Democratic voters. (Doesn't mean there aren't a few rebels who vote GOP despite being tax-takers instead of tax-payers.) Obamacare did this by committing the federal government to cover almost all (90%+) of the cost of the new enrollees.

It's time for this to change. Add work requirements and change the federal share to what it would have been pre-Obamacare. This will force states to figure out who to cut from Medicaid themselves. And it will mostly be able-bodied working-age people without kids.

I note that the main pressure on the Colorado state budget this year — and it will be worse next year — is the cost of Medicaid expansion. But, as Margaret Thatcher told us, at some point you run out of other people’s money. (I note that this is one of the few great and famous sayings with correct attribution. It’s amazing how many things are attributed to Jefferson or Churchill or, sometimes, Yogi Berra, that those guys didn’t say.)

If we can't cut back on Medicaid spending now, especially with the specter of a Democratic House majority after the midterms (not as much a comment about Trump as about the history of midterms), and perhaps a Democratic president elected in 2028, we will never reform anything. Well, at least not until we’re facing national insolvency on a scale that even Democrats will be pushed to act. (And their way of acting will be economy-wrecking massive tax hikes.)

The US is on an unsustainable fiscal path. Everybody’s known it for a long time. Republicans in particular know it needs to change. We have a president who campaigned against reforming the two major programs, Medicare and Social Security, that are going bankrupt. The least he can do is not just go along with, but actively support with comments to the whole nation, shrinking Medicaid rolls, including returning more of the burden to states and by getting young able-bodied people out of the business of picking your pocket and into an actual job.

A Common Sense Budget Reconciliation Bill - WSJ