Obama’s Hospital Admission

My latest, at National Review Online:

Buried deep within President Obama’s $3.77 trillion budget is a tiny little proposal to increase Medicaid spending by $360 million. In a budget as large as this one, $360 million is scarcely worth mentioning. It amounts to less than one‐​hundredth of one percent of total outlays. But this 0.01 percent is worth mentioning, because it proves the president’s health‐​care law will not work…


With this proposal, President Obama has admitted that:


1. The PPACA is not likely to reduce uncompensated care in 2014…


2. The PPACA won’t reduce the deficit…


3. Hospitals can stop crying poverty…


4. States don’t need to expand Medicaid to protect hospitals.


The Washington Post reports that rescission of the DSH cuts “could make it a bit easier for states not to expand the Medicaid program. If they know the additional dollars are coming in, there’s a bit less worry about turning down the Medicaid expansion funds.” At the same time, the president has undercut expansion supporters by admitting that expanding Medicaid will not reduce uncompensated care.


The president’s budget shows that the brave state legislators who have been fighting the Medicaid expansion in states like Ohio and Florida were right all along — and it makes expansion supporters, like Governors Rick Scott (R., Fla.) and John Kasich (R., Ohio), look rather silly.


This relatively small spending item is a big admission that the president’s health‐​care law simply won’t work, and it should provide encouragement to state officials who are still resisting the massive increase in deficit spending, government bureaucracy, and health‐​care costs the PPACA embodies.

Read the whole thing.