Medicaid Expansion Moves Low-Income Children to the Back of the Line (Guest: Charles Blahous)

The Medicaid expansion in Obamacare has proven to remove health care access for low-income children compared to free-market reforms.

Show Notes

Now that Obamacare has been in effect for eight years, data is showing that Medicaid spending on low-income children has not kept pace with states that decided against expanding their programs to able-bodied adults.  Charles Blahous, the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Chair and senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, joins Health Care News to discuss this development. In addition to writing several books and publishing many studies on public policy issues, Blahous served as the deputy director of the National Economic Council under George W. Bush.

On December 13, Blahous and Liam Sigaud published “The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid Expansion is Shifting Resources away from Low-Income Children.”

Host AnneMarie Schieber and Blahous discuss why spending growth for low-income children did not keep pace with growth in non-expansion states.  Why is it that children have been particularly impacted? What might have been a smarter approach? Are waivers the answer? Is expanding insurance coverage to a wider group incompatible with caring for the most vulnerable? This and more are discussed on today’s episode.

Creators & Guests

Host

AnneMarie Schieber

AnneMarie Schieber brings decades of experience as an investigative news reporter to the forefront as host of Health Care News from The Heartland Institute. Along with hosting the podcast, Schieber is the managing editor of Health Care News, Heartland's monthly newspaper for health care reform. Before her work in the liberty movement, Schieber spent several decades at television stations in Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania. The Associated Press awarded her the top honor of "Best Individual Reporting" for being the first reporter to call attention to government efforts to subsidize spending by increasing automobile fines, typically on low-income motorists.

What is Heartland Daily Podcast?

The “fire hose” of all podcasts produced by The Heartland Institute, a national free-market think tank.