Dive Brief:
- With Pennsylvania now expanding Medicaid, the list of states that have adopted this provision of the Affordable Care Act has reached 27 (including the District of Columbia). Several other states, including traditionally Republican ones, are also considering expansion in 2015.
- States that either have a plan for expansion submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or that are preparing to submit to CMS include: Indiana, Tennessee, Wyoming, Utah and Maine. Many of these plans hinge on governors getting the idea past legislators, which may be more difficult in some states than in others. In Maine, legislators are prepared to move forward if Republican Gov. Paul LePage loses the election in November.
- Kaiser Health News reports that Medicaid expansion under the ACA has been faster-growing than the original adoption of the program. When Medicaid launched in 1966, only six states signed up; 20 states followed later in the year, with 11 more joining in 1967.
Dive Insight:
The cost of refusal may be high: An August study from the Urban Institute reported that states that don't expand could lose $424 billion in federal funding through 2022.
According to recent statistics, the benefits of expansion to hospitals are dramatic. A report released in June by the Colorado Hospital Association found that Medicaid patients increased, self-pay patients decreased and charity care dropped by an average of $1 million per hospital in states that expanded. In contrast, an August article in Modern Healthcare found that the number of self-pay patents rose and uncompensated care increased in the first half of 2014 in hospitals in states where Medicaid was not expanded.
Want to read more? You may enjoy this story about Pennsylvania's recent waiver agreement to expand Medicaid.