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How to think about Medicaid expansion and the national debt
THE
BIG PICTURE
One argument we’re hearing from Republicans against Medicaid expansion is that we can’t afford to add to the federal debt. After all, even if it’s a good deal for the fiscal bottom line in Arkansas to accept more than a billion dollars a year in federal spending, that money is coming from deficit spending on the national level. But if Arkansas turns down the expansion money, it won’t make a dent in the national debt — not even close. It’s so tiny that it would take up more pages than we have in this issue to make a bar graph that properly showed you the scale. See below for a picture of just how insignificant it would be to the national debt if we say no. If we say yes? Here at home, the money would give coverage to more than 200,000 of our neediest citizens, add jobs, generate tax revenues and help keep hospitals alive.
218,000 Arkansans who would be newly eligible for Medicaid if the state goes forward with expansion. Of those, 51,000 fall between 100 and 138 percent of FPL. If the state doesn’t expand Medicaid, they will be eligible to buy heavily subsidized insurance on the exchange. The remaining 167,000 make less than 100 percent of the FPL. If Arkansas doesn’t expand Medicaid, these people are out of luck, even as people making all the way up to 400 percent of FPL ($44,600 for an individual) get government help. And what about that 250,000 figure? That’s the state Department of Human Services projection of the total number of people that would be added to the Medicaid rolls with expansion. They project 215,000 newly eligible, just a tad under the Urban Institute’s estimate. They also project that 35,000 people that are already eligible (25,000 adults plus 10,000 kids) for Medicaid but haven’t signed up would end up enrolling because of the publicity about the Medicaid program associated with expansion.
$25
$16.4
TRILLION
TRILLION Imagine that the current national debt (more than $16.4 trillion) is the 25-story Stephens building. A year of federal spending (about $1.2 billion in FY 2015) on Medicaid expansion in Arkansas amounts to the length of a ladybug.
INSIDER, CONT.
If the national debt by 2021 (projected to be around $25 trillion) is the Stephens building, the total federal spending on Medicaid expansion in Arkansas between 2014 and 2021 (around $10 billion) would be a baby carrot.
$10
BILLION
Christmas again
$1.2
DHS projects the federal government would spend $1.19 billion on Medicaid expansion in Arkansas in fiscal year 2015, the first full fiscal year of expansion. The federal debt is currently more than $16.4 trillion. The spending is 1/13,700th of the debt; to scale, that is approximately 0.3 inches (ladybug!) compared to height of Stephens Building (365 feet). The Congressional Budget Office projects the national debt to be approximately $25 trillion in 2021. DHS projects federal spending on Medicaid expansion between 2014 and 2021 to be approximately $10 billion, or 1/2500th of the debt in 2021. To scale, that is approximately 1.75 inches (baby carrot!) compared to height of Stephens Building.
BRIAN CHILSON (STEPHENS BUILDING), SANJAY ACH/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (CARROT), KALDARI/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (LADYBUG)
BILLION
Secretary of State Mark Martin has revived a tradition of sending the government’s best wishes for a Merry Christmas to the legislature, Congress, Capitol employees and others. Former Secretary of State Sharon Priest broke with the custom when she began her term in 1994, sending a secular holiday greeting, as did Charlie Daniels, or so his spokesperson, Janet Harris, in the state auditor’s office, recalls. Daniels did not send a card out at all in 2010, his last year in office, Harris said. (Priest successor Bill McCuen’s practice could not be determined.) “It was our decision to put Merry Christmas on there, and we stand by it,” Martin’s spokesman, Alex Reed, said in an email to the Times, which had been asked about the religious message and the cost. The office spent $1,162.75 for the cards, which picture the state Capitol, and $394.65 for postage, Reed said.
CORRECTIONS A photograph of a house that ran in the Times’ Natives Guide (Jan. 2, 2013) was incorrectly identified as a recently sold property at 4818 Country Club Blvd. The house pictured is at 2200 N. Spruce, and had no relation to the real estate article it accompanied. The Natives Guide also incorrectly listed Fred Allen as the state representative for District 29. The District 29 representative is in fact Fred Love.
www.arktimes.com
JANUARY 16, 2013
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