by James A. Bacon
In a recent survey asking people if they supported or opposed Medicaid expansion in Virginia, Del. R. Steven Landes, R-Weyers Cave, made what PolitiFactVirginia reporter Sean Gorman regarded as a fallacious statement:
While expansion would enroll up to 400,000 currently uninsured Virginians in Medicaid, it could cost the Commonwealth of Virginia over $1 billion per year, forcing cuts to other key services like education, mental health and public safety.
Landes’ estimate rests on the “eye-popping” supposition that the federal government might one day renege on its commitment to pay 90% of the cost of expansion, as provided in the Affordable Care Act, wrote Gorman Monday. “But this is pure speculation on his part. There’s no effort in Congress now to cut the federal share at all, let alone by the proportion Landes suggests.”
The burden of proof rests on Landes to back up his statement with facts, Gorman says, “and he comes up short. We rate his claim False.”
Incredibly, Gorman failed to notice that Republicans in Congress succeeded in passing a bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act, which President Obama salvaged with a veto Friday. Here’s what House Speaker Paul Ryan had to say:
The idea that Obamacare is the law of the land for good is a myth. This law will collapse under its own weight, or it will be repealed. Because all those rules and procedures Senate Democrats have used to block us from doing this? That’s all history. We have now shown that there is a clear path to repealing Obamacare without 60 votes in the Senate. So, next year, if we’re sending this bill to a Republican president, it will get signed into law.
What would happen if Virginia enacted Medicaid expansion and a Republican administration and Congress then repealed it, thus eliminating federal funding for the program? Virginia would face the choice of either abandoning the program it had just enacted, throwing the health care market into turmoil, or continuing to fund the expansion itself.
Please note that Landes did not say that Medicaid expansion “will” increase state funding by $1 billion a year, he said that it “could.” Who will win the 2016 presidential election? While Las Vegas odds give Hillary Clinton the edge, they concede that a Republican has a solid shot at making it to the White House. The scenario that I just laid out — and very possibly the one that Landes was thinking about — very well could happen, and it would be reckless to ignore the possibility.
There are logical reasons for supporting Medicaid expansion — hundreds of thousands of Virginians still lack health coverage, we’re already paying for the expansion through other taxes under the Affordable Care Act, even if Virginia doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity, so why not? — but those are separate issues that must be considered on their own merits.
As for proclaiming Landes’s statement outright false, Gorman was seriously remiss in ignoring the political reality that the Republican Party remains ferociously opposed to Obamacare and likely will repeal it if it takes power in Washington next year. His analysis comes up short. I rate his claim False.
