“In a normal year, we might see 60,000 additional members,” says Tony Rodgers, director of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), the state’s Medicaid agency. “We’re probably going to see close to 300,000 additional members by the end of the year.”
The discussion in Washington over health care includes an expansion of Medicaid, but Arizona is having trouble paying for the program at its current level.
“This is kind of a financial tsunami for us,” says Rodgers. “And we’re just trying to hold onto any log that’s rolling along, and trying to save ourselves until the wave stops.”
Okay, so how is the federal government going to improve health care by taking it over? Medicaid and Medicare are going under and the Left wants to federalize the entire system? How about this…why not have the federal government show that it is capable of handling Medicaid, Medicare, and the VA [i]before[/i] they get to run the whole show? Call it a pilot program.
Good question and suggestion, S&ToN;. It then raises the issue of further externalities to health care, namely if the federal government can’t control costs of Medicare and Medicaid without taking over the system entirely, what happens when the inputs to the health care system continue to rise in price?