Don't Believe The Hype
Yet another story about the exaggerated and manufactured estimates from Missouri Republicans about federal health care reform legislation. The AP:
[Lt. Gov. Peter] Kinder released “an open letter” to Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon last week asserting that Missouri’s cost could be as high as $450 million a year. Kinder chief of staff Rich AuBuchon said later that Kinder got the figure from House Budget Committee Chairman Allen Icet, who got it last fall from the Department of Social Services.
But the agency no longer uses the $450 million estimate. That’s because it was based on a previous version of the federal legislation and assumed states would have to shoulder a greater proportion of the expansion costs than is currently proposed. [...]
Senate President Pro Tem Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, put Missouri’s cost from a Medicaid expansion at between $250 million and $450 million a year. “It would be devastating,” Shields said.
Senate Majority Leader Kevin Engler, sitting besides Shields during a media interview, upped the cost estimate further on the assumption the federal government would ratchet back its share of the Medicaid tab in a few years. “We’re talking about like a billion dollars that it’s going to cost” the state, said Engler, R-Farmington.
In an electronic newsletter later in the week, Engler put the cost at anywhere from $250 million to “half a billion dollars.” He described that as an “exorbitant amount” that would force Missouri “to make drastic cuts to education or raise taxes.”
Engler’s office said the estimate came from the Senate Republicans’ communications staff, which said its source was the nonpartisan staff of the Missouri Senate Appropriations Committee. The appropriations office said it calculated a $250 million estimate with figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation based on the number of uninsured, the average cost of covering people on Medicaid and the proportion Missouri would pay under the federal legislation. The appropriations office said it wasn’t the source for larger estimates.
Kinder's office has known of the updated Department of Social Services estimates since at least October, but has steadfastly refused to update their communications and use correct, less scary information.
