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Bloomberg
Refusal
to Expand Medicaid May Cost Employers
$1 Billion
By Alex Wayne
Mar 13, 2013
Governors
who refuse to expand their Medicaid
programs for the poor may cost employers in their states as much as
$1.3
billion in federal fines, a study found.
A
clause in the 2010 health-care overhaul
penalizes some employers when their workers aren’t able to obtain
affordable
medical coverage through the company. Employers can avoid those fees if
their
workers qualify for Medicaid as part of an expansion that as many as 22
states
have rejected, according to a report today by Jackson Hewitt Tax
Service Inc.
Without
Medicaid, a “shared responsibility”
payment of as much as $3,000 may be triggered for each employee who
can’t get
insurance through their company. In Texas, the largest state to refuse
to
increase Medicaid, employers may be liable for as much as $448 million
in
fines, the study found. In Florida, where the legislature has refused
an
expansion supported by Governor Rick Scott, employers may pay as much
as $219
million.
“A
lot of businesses have taken the position
that they oppose a Medicaid expansion because it would increase their
taxes,”
Brian Haile, senior vice president for health policy at Jackson Hewitt
in
Parsippany, New Jersey, said in an interview. “The irony of this, or
the
paradox, is that the opposite may be true, at least for some businesses
in some
states.”
Under
the Affordable Care Act, states are
expected to expand Medicaid, the joint federal-state health plan for
the poor,
to cover every person earning wages close to the poverty level.
Medicaid’s
expansion is one of two core provisions in the law’s mission of
extending
health coverage to about 27 million uninsured people. The Supreme Court
said in
June the federal government can’t force states to expand the program.
Shared
Responsibility…
Read
the rest of the article at Bloomberg
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