Kevin Drum is right that non-participation in the Medicaid expansion is basically a tribal revolt against President Obama that has no policy merit, but the enormous difference in profitability for hospitals in red and blue states will eventually drive non-participation out of existence. Not only are blue state hospitals seeing a big downtick in uninsured patients and a big uptick in Medicaid patients (both phenomena are not evidenced in non-participating red states), but hospitals are no longer getting compensation from the federal government for treating the uninsured.
In other words, in states that expanded Medicaid, the huge drop off in uninsured patients pays for the loss of money to compensate them for treating the uninsured, but in states that didn’t expand Medicaid and have not seen a drop in uninsured cases, they’re just losing money. Not only that, but staggering sums of money are being withheld from these states that would have stimulated their economies.
Non-participation in the Medicaid expansion is the most self-defeating thing I’ve ever seen a political party do, and that doesn’t touch on the immorality of it.
But I think that logic (and economic self-interest) will win out here before too long.
