Obamacare Prepares to Slam the States – by Dick Morris | FrontPage Magazine

Obamacare Prepares to Slam the States – by Dick Morris | FrontPage Magazine: "Anxious to avoid raising taxes too much to pay for their health care proposals, the Obama administration and its congressional allies hit on a great new idea: Make the states raise their taxes to fund the program, instead.

Both the House and the Senate bills require that states cover a larger percentage of their people under Medicaid — a joint state and federally funded program. The idea was to force states to raise their taxes to cover a big part of the health care bill for treating poor people. Since the Feds can simply charge any increase in spending to their already overdrawn bank account, but the states have to balance their budgets, the increased state spending for Medicaid will cause sharp increases in state taxes. And the governors will get the blame, not Obama and not the Congress.

The House bill requires states to give Medicaid to those whose incomes are less than 150 percent of the poverty level, while the Senate will settle for only 125 percent. For most states, this is a hefty increase.

In some states, like New York, where Medicaid covers everyone making 150 percent of the poverty level already, there will not be any extra required spending.

But not so in California, which only covers 100 percent of the poverty level. Were the House bill to pass, the already fiscally beleaguered state would have to increase its Medicaid spending on poor people by 50 percent, at least an extra $2 billion a year and perhaps more."