April 17, 2013 10:04AM # Obama’s Hospital Admission By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) --- SHARE My latest, at [*National Review Online*](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/345743/obamas-damaging-admission): > 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](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/10/the-white-house-wants-to-reverse-500-million-in-medicaid-cuts/) 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](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/345743/obamas-damaging-admission). ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).