Republican governors around the country are backing down to their opposition of opening Medicaid to more of the population. Currently, the program does not cover, in most states that is, the childless, non disabled and non elderly, which leaves millions of poor (below 138% of the national poverty line) out in the cold, so to speak.
Hospitals who have been urging governors to expand the program on the argument that their costs would come down because, currently, the poor just go the ER when there's a medical problem. That's why hospitals carry bad debt at 3x the level of the average corporation. And that's also why a C-Section costs $12,000 or open heart costs $200,000. Medicaid would enroll the poor into managed networks with primary physicians. So, it looks like the GOP is wising up to this argument even though most states clearly don't have the funds to expand much of any program these days.
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