August 27, 2012

The Environment for RI's Health Benefit Exchange & Medicaid Expansion

Justin Katz

The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has been collecting reasons not to pursue a "dependency portal" unified infrastructure, marketing all government services through the health benefits exchange currently in the design phase.  But there are plenty of reasons to resist the exchange and the related expansion of Medicaid eligibility without regard to the cutting edge of the entitlement state.

Both the exchange — which will subsidize health insurance for families up to 400% of the poverty level (around $90,000 for a family of four) — and the Medicaid expansion are anticipated to greatly increase access to health insurance and use of medical services.  Indeed, that's the point.  The problem is that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA; "ObamaCare") itself does nothing to expand the supply of doctors, and Rhode Island, specifically, has taken no steps to make up for the shortcoming.

In other words, beyond the direct costs to Rhode Islanders, through state government revenue, will be a cost in the health of the local health care market. The state already suffers from high costs and burdensome state mandates.  That's why some charts and graphics by Avik Roy layer in a disconcerting additional consideration.

Continue reading on the Ocean State Current...

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Liberalism and big. govt. do a great job of spreading the poverty around. Wait until HusseinCare hits in 2014. Fewer doctors, less quality care, higher costs, longer waits, denied coverage (beware seniors!!). This is the vision of liberalism that seeks to redistribute and mete out "fairness". Hussein's drug addicted battery acid drinking brother in the Kenyan hovel is also looking for fairness. Let's see what Hussein has in store for the rest of us.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2186782/Obamas-slumdog-brother-Meet-hopeless-drunk-Nairobi-shanty-town-U-S-Presidents-BROTHER.html

Posted by: ANTHONY at August 27, 2012 11:11 PM
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