White House allies use Medicaid anniversary to push expansion

A key White House ally on Obamacare used the 50th anniversary Thursday of Medicaid, the government health program that covers 71 million poor Americans, to urge red states to expand the program to millions more.

Enroll America said 12.8 million people have obtained Medicaid since October 2013, when the Affordable Care Act began to take root, but that 20 holdout states are holding the nation back.

“The increase in Medicaid enrollment has been largest in states that decided to expand Medicaid, and millions of Americans do not have an affordable option in states that chose not to expand Medicaid,” Enroll America President Anne Filipic said.

Obamacare called on states to expand the federal-state program to those making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, although the Supreme Court effectively made it optional in 2012.

Congressional Democrats and the administration have urged holdout states to embrace expansion, as the government picks up the whole cost of expansion through 2016, a share that scales down to 90 percent in 2020 and beyond.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, an independent, recently announced he will unilaterally move to expand Medicaid, and governors in Utah, Wyoming and Georgia are exploring ways to expand their programs in a state-tailored way.

Republican lawmakers in non-expansion states say augmenting their programs would bust their budgets down the road. They say the federal government cannot be trusted to pay their share, and that Obamacare should be scrapped entirely.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are defending the signature law as an extension of both Medicaid and Medicare, the program for seniors that President Lyndon B. Johnson also signed into law in 1965.

Today, about one in three Americans depend on the government-sponsored insurance through either program.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said the programs work hand in hand with Obamacare, which has expanded coverage to about 16 million Americans who didn’t have it before.

“Medicare and Medicaid are helping us lead the way, with help from the Affordable Care Act, to a system that delivers better care, spends our health dollars more wisely, and puts educated and empowered consumers at the center of their care so that they can stay healthy,” she said at a Capitol Hill rally Wednesday.