Add this request to the list of budget items President Obama certainly won’t get from the Republican-led Congress: a proposal to give holdout states more federal Medicaid dollars if they expand the program under Obamacare.
The president wants to hold out a carrot and a stick in the form of extra Medicaid funds, which he hopes might encourage the 20 states that have rejected expanding the program to move ahead with it.
In his 2017 budget proposal released Tuesday, Obama asked Congress to supply him with extra dollars to cover states’ full cost of expanding Medicaid for three years, regardless of when they choose to go forward.
The Affordable Care Act initially provided 100 percent federal funding for the newly eligible enrollees, but that funding match drops down to 95 percent after this year and then to 90 percent in 2020.
“The budget provides further incentive for states to expand Medicaid by covering the full cost of expansion for the first three years regardless of when a state expands, ensuring equity between states that already expanded and those that will expand in the future,” Obama’s budget says.
One of the ways Obama’s healthcare law expands health insurance coverage is by allowing states to expand their Medicaid programs to cover those earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, about $26,700 for a family of three. Democratic-led states have embraced expansion, while many Republican-led states have rejected it.
