Kinder's Scary Medicaid Projections Only Off By 400%

Update: A previous version of this post confused Medicare with Medicaid -- a boneheaded mistake on my part. 

Peter Kinder's new YouTube belly-flop, at its core, is focused the fact that expanding Medicaid eligibility in Missouri is going to cost some money.  Kinder is misinformed about some rather significant details regarding the Senate Finance Committee he's talking about, but it is true that adding to the Medicaid rolls is not a cost-free exercise.

However, the Finance Committee plan will not cost Missouri anywhere close to what Kinder claims.

In his taxpayer-supported political video, Kinder said:

How much would this plan cost Missouri?  The answer is: This would cost Missourians nearly $2.3 billion more than current law over five years. That's $450 million more for Missouri taxpayers every year.  How much is $450 million?  It's about the same amount we spend annually to run every prison in the state of Missouri.  It's about half of what we spend every year on higher education.

So how would we pay for this health care experiment? Would we release all the prisoners and fire more than 11,000 corrections employees?  Would we close our state's universities?  Or will you be forced to pay more of your hard-earned dollars on taxes?

Aside from his ridiculous fearmongering about closing prisons and universities, Kinder is wrong on the annual cost of the Finance Committee proposal he says he's talking about, and by a lot.  The most recent estimates from the state, which take into account the Finance Committee's considerable changes in recent months,show that the annual cost for Missouri in the latest plan will be closer to $91 million.

Kinder's numbers are just shy of five times the most recent estimates from the Department of Social Services. 

Why have the expected costs changed?  Because under the new proposal, the state would be required to pay for just 5% of the expanded coverage through 2019.  So while Team Kinder's use of outdated estimates to make a web video they hoped would scare Claire McCaskill from supporting a health care reform bill on the Senate floor demonstrates an ignorance of what's been happening in the Senate's deliberation process, or the fact that they weren't really interested in presenting an honest assessment of how the reform legislation may impact the state budget.

Furthermore, as we have seen from many critics, Kinder's warnings ignore what we're already paying in the current system for the uninsured. Kinder says Senators and Congressmembers who support health care reform this year "are doing so at the cost of Missouri's future" -- but no matter how you slice it, the status quo is not without considerable cost.  PBS looked at the costs of the uninsured, and found the following:

• The lost productivity of uninsured Americans costs the economy up to $130 billion dollars a year — more than the estimated cost to cover the uninsured.
• Covering the bills of the uninsured increases the annual health premiums for the average family by $922.
• Hospitals typically charge uninsured patients 2.5 times what they charge privately insured patients.
• Uninsured adults are 4.5 times more likely to go without medical care than insured adults.
• Uninsured cancer patients are nearly twice as likely to die within five years as insured patients.
• Over half a million Americans are currently battling cancer without insurance.
• Among non-elderly adults, the lack of health insurance is the sixth leading cause of death in America.

Finally, as has been noted at length in this space, concerns from Kinder and his fellow Republicans about the costs of the different proposals in Congress would be a lot more persuasive if they pointed to a comprehensive alternative that would cost less and/or provide better results.  But until then, and until they acknowledge the problems and hidden costs of the current situation, they're just arguing for the status quo.