Proponents of Medicaid expansion may argue that the state should add 300,000 able-bodied adults to the program, but Missouri’s Medicaid system is already expanding at an unsustainable rate.
Medicaid’s caseload and cost naturally grow each year, threatening the budgets for essential state services like education and healthcare for the disabled. In fiscal year (FY) 2006, Missouri’s Medicaid program cost $5.74 billion. By FY 2014, the cost had skyrocketed to $8.97 billion, even without expanding eligibility.
The additional Medicaid enrollees from the insurance exchange will place even further pressure on Missouri’s budget. Of the 1.6 million Americans that have enrolled in an insurance exchange, 1.46 million were actually found to be eligible for Medicaid, and states now have to find a way to pay for their coverage.
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As of November 30, almost 6,500 Missourians were determined by the federal exchange to be eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), but only about 4,000 people in our state selected a marketplace plan through the exchange.
The Kaiser Foundation estimates that Medicaid expansion would cost our state an additional $431 million from 2014 to 2019. The legislature would be forced to cut enormous sums from other state programs to find the money needed for Medicaid expansion. Our state is already struggling to pay for its current Medicaid obligations, and it would be reckless and irresponsible to force future generations to pay for the cost of an even larger program.