The State Covid Medicaid Scam
The Biden Administration quietly admits that the scare over lost post-pandemic insurance coverage was phony. By The Editorial Board Aug. 17, 2023 6:47 pm ET Photo: Getty Images Remember when the Biden Administration warned that ending the public-health pandemic emergency would result in tens of millions of people losing Medicaid coverage and going uninsured? Now the Health and Human Services Department is quietly conceding the insurance scare was exaggerated. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made the admission in a 2,144-page rule this month that reduces payments to hospitals that treat uninsured patients. Under the Famil
Photo: Getty Images
Remember when the Biden Administration warned that ending the public-health pandemic emergency would result in tens of millions of people losing Medicaid coverage and going uninsured? Now the Health and Human Services Department is quietly conceding the insurance scare was exaggerated.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made the admission in a 2,144-page rule this month that reduces payments to hospitals that treat uninsured patients. Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, states received an increase in Medicaid funding during the public-health emergency as long as they didn’t remove people who became ineligible from their rolls.
As a result, Medicaid enrollment swelled to 87 million in April from 64.2 million at the start of the pandemic. Medicaid spending ballooned during this time to $867 billion from $613 billion with Washington covering most of the increased bill.
The White House kept renewing the emergency declaration even as the virus threat waned as progressives warned that failure to do so would result in a spike in the number of Americans without insurance. But as we explained at the time, the real purpose of the emergency extensions was to expand the welfare state.
Republicans in Congress rescinded the Medicaid continuous coverage requirement in last December’s omnibus spending bill, which helped spur the White House to end the emergency in May. And what do you know? The Administration is now walking back its dire predictions.
Buried in its hospital payment regulation, CMS projects that the share of Americans who are uninsured will tick up only slightly to 8.5% next year from its record low of 7.7% as states remove ineligible people from Medicaid.
“Although Medicaid enrollment is expected to decrease significantly,” CMS explains, “many individuals who were not disenrolled from Medicaid during the public health emergency already had comprehensive coverage from another source (such as through an employer) and thus remain insured even when disenrolled from Medicaid.”
In other words, most of the 20 million or so Americans who are set to be removed from the Medicaid rolls have other insurance. They didn’t need Medicaid, but states kept them enrolled to suck more money out of Washington, and the Biden Administration was complicit with this scam.
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