PolicyGuy

Thursday, March 31, 2005


Health Care: The Latest in Medicaid Reform, Federal-Level.
Nina Owcharenko of The Heritage Foundation offers a quick review of where Medicaid's coming from, and what changes are needed.

For starters, Medicaid is part of the triad of entitlement programs (Social Security and Medicare being the others) that account for 44 percent of all federal spending today. Medicaid enrolls approximately 46 million persons, and is now a larger program than Medicare. From 2000 through 2003, it grew at 10 percent a year, an unsustainable rate.

The rest of the policy note describes Bush Administration proposals to change Medicaid. They include the latest in the cat-and-mouse between federal officials who distribute money from Washington and state administrators who game the system, and increased enforcement on asset transfers that allow the wealthy and middle class to make grandma, who would otherwise not qualify for taxpayer funding, appear to be a pauper.

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"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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