What are the negative effects of Medicaid expansion?
Asked by: Prof. Patience Lakin | Last update: October 4, 2025Score: 4.4/5 (70 votes)
What are the disadvantages of expanding Medicaid?
Residents of states that accept the Medicaid expansion will still face challenges in accessing needed services due to important deficiencies in essential health benefits, financial strain resulting from cost-sharing provisions targeted at Medicaid beneficiaries, and decreased access to specialists relative to those ...
What are the negatives of Medicaid?
Disadvantages of Medicaid
One of the primary reasons for this is that Medicaid reimbursements are lower than those of commercial insurers for most procedures and treatments.
What are the biggest issues with Medicaid?
Looking ahead, there are three immediate challenges facing Medicaid for the remainder of the year: eligibility and state oversight, loss of temporary coverage due to the pandemic and lack of public support.
What effect did the Medicaid expansion have on dropout rates?
The interpretation is that on average, states that adopted the Medicaid Expansion reduced their dropout rates by 0.658 percentage points more than states that did not expand Medicaid.
The Medicaid Expansion and Its Effects
How does Medicaid expansion affect states?
Expansion has produced net savings for many states. That's because the federal government pays the vast majority of the cost of expansion coverage, while expansion generates offsetting savings and, in many states, raises revenue from the taxes that the state imposes on private health plans and providers.
Who benefits the most from Medicaid expansion?
Expanding Medicaid helps low-income families' health and financial well-being, especially those in which someone has lost a job. In states that expanded Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), unemployed workers experienced large gains in coverage.
Why are people against Medicaid?
Conservatives view Medicaid as “just another welfare program,” this time hiding in health care clothes. Their view is that welfare programs, including Medicaid, have caused more harm than good by promoting dependency and using taxpayer dollars unwisely.
What states refused Medicaid expansion?
The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was enacted in 2010, but 10 states have not expanded Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health care for low-income people. They are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
What does Medicaid expansion cover?
The Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medicaid expansion expanded Medicaid coverage to nearly all adults with incomes up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level ($20,783 for an individual in 2024) and provided states with an enhanced federal matching rate (FMAP) for their expansion populations.
Why doctors don t like Medicaid?
One reason is that reimbursement rates for Medicaid are lower than for Medicare or commercial insurance. Another (often overlooked) factor, however, is physician's risk of payment denials and the administrative hassle they face trying to get reimbursed by Medicaid.
How can Medicaid be improved?
To expand access to care, the AMA works with state advocates to fully fund the Medicaid program and increase physician participation with policies to streamline enrollment, ensure fair audit procedures and improve managed care programs.
Who uses Medicaid the most?
In 2020, Medicaid and CHIP provided coverage for nearly 55 million people of color. These programs provide essential coverage for a population that is more diverse than the broader U.S. population—especially among children, with 61 percent of Medicaid and CHIP enrollees under age 19 being children of color.
What are some disadvantages of Medicaid?
Yet for State and Federal legislators, executive officials, and the public, Medicaid is the program that costs way too much. Advocates for the poor, as well as health care providers, complain that the program has an enormous amount of unnecessary paperwork and a blizzard of byzantine rules.
Does Medicaid expansion affect children?
We find that these expansions were associated with increases in children's public health insurance coverage by 5.5 percentage points and reductions in private coverage by 5 percentage points.
How does Medicaid expansion affect rural hospitals?
Helping health care facilities
One recent study found median rates of uncompensated care in 2019 were just 2.88% for rural hospitals in Medicaid expansion states, compared with 6.31% for rural hospitals in non-expansion states.
What does Medicaid not cover?
Though Medicaid covers a wide range of services, there are limitations on certain types of care, such as infertility treatments, elective abortions, and some types of alternative medicine. For example, the federal government lists family planning as a mandatory service benefit, but states interpret this differently.
Which state has the best Medicaid program?
The top states—ranked from 1 to 10—are Massachusetts, Nebraska, Vermont, Alaska, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Minnesota, New York, Washington, and New Hampshire.
Why has Florida not expanded Medicaid?
Concerns about the financial sustainability of such an expansion and the potential strain it could place on the state's budget were key factors in this decision. This choice set Florida apart from many other states that opted to expand their Medicaid programs to provide healthcare coverage to a broader population.
What is the main problem with Medicaid?
But it has been difficult to launch and sustain managed care under Medicaid: Program design has been complicated and time-consuming, and administrative costs are higher, at least in the initial stages (Freund et. al., 1989; Spitz and Abramson, 1987). The Federal waiver process has been cumbersome for many States.
Which states did not accept Medicaid expansion?
Ten states—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming—have not expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act to individuals with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level.
How does Medicaid expansion affect hospitals?
Prior research found that Medicaid expansion has improved the financial performance of hospitals and other providers, though these effects may vary somewhat by hospital type. Studies show that expansion contributed to increased hospital revenue overall and from specific services.
What is the downside of Medicaid expansion?
KEY FINDINGS. More than 5.8 million Americans would be forced off private insurance and onto welfare if the remaining states were to expand Medicaid. This crowd-out alone would exceed $8 billion. Expansion has harmed hospitals and providers, forcing millions off private insurance and onto welfare, which pays less.
How often does Medicaid check your bank account?
Medicaid agencies can check your account balances for bank accounts at any financial institution you've used in the past five years. They will check when you submit an application and on an annual basis, but checks can occur at any time.
Does Medicaid expansion increase taxes?
Second, it allows states to cut spending outside of Medicaid — particularly on state-funded health services for the uninsured. Finally, expansion may increase state revenues due to taxes related to Medicaid expansion or taxes on the increased economic activity it triggers.