I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
A national debate is brewing over how much the new health care law will cost states and the sticking point is how many uninsured individuals will sign up for Medicaid.
A central reform of the new federal law calls for states to expand eligibility for Medicaid, the government’s low-income health insurance program, to 133 percent of poverty level, meaning more people presumably will enroll. But — and here’s the rub — no one can predict for sure how many uninsured individuals will take advantage of the new opportunity and enroll.
The answer is important. One scenario estimates New Mexico would spend $194 million over six years to pull this off. That comes from what Stateline.org calls the most-often cited estimate of enrollment, which has come from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO predicts 16 million new Medicaid and children’s health insurance enrollees across the country, a number that would cost the states a total of $20 billion to cover the new enrollees between 2014 and 2019, Stateline tells us.
But a report released yesterday by Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, posits that state Medicaid costs could increase by more than twice that amount — to $43 billion — thanks to enrollment that could far exceed CBO estimates, Stateline tells us.
Under this scenario, the Medicaid expansion would cost New Mexico $278 million in extra spending over six years.
Nationally, the Kaiser report says, as many as 23 million of the nation’s 46 million uninsured individuals could enroll in Medicaid under the new law. The assumption underlying this scenario where New Mexico spends more is that states will lead a much more aggressive outreach campaign to enroll more individuals in Medicaid, in part, to unlock federal funds. The federal government is paying the vast majority of dollars that pay for the required expansion of Medicaid.
Under this “enhanced outreach scenario,” Kaiser report estimates that roughly 163,000 New Mexicans would sign up for the newly expanded Medicaid vs. 111,000 under the CBO scenario. The scenario where 163,000 New Mexicans sign up would cost New Mexico the $278 million in additional spending over the six-year period, from fiscal 2014 through 2019. The scenario where 111,000 New Mexicans sign up would cost New Mexico $194 million over the same period.
While the state will spend more under either scenario, it’s important to note that the federal government is picking up the majority of the tab to expand Medicaid. The federal government’s price tag under the scenario in which 111,000 uninsured New Mexicans sign up for Medicaid is $4.5 billion over the six-year period and $5.6 billion under the scenario in which 163,000 uninsured New Mexicans sign up.
The dilemma for all of us watching the roll out of this new law is no one knows for sure what the state will do and how many uninsured individuals will sign up in New Mexico. And that means we won’t know how much the Medicaid expansion will cost until it happens.
