Chart: This Is Not 'Medicaid Reform'
The Heritage Foundation published a chart comparing the direct costs of a Missouri Medicaid expansion with projected savings through 2022. Even that comparison omitted roughly $1.6 billion associated with the program's “woodwork effect”—people already eligible for Medicaid who would newly enroll as attention to the expansion increased.
That omission makes the chart closer to a best-case scenario than a comprehensive estimate. Yet even under those favorable assumptions, the fiscal picture remains troubling. Expansion supporters had not produced a credible plan for the state costs the policy would create.
Calling that arrangement “reform” does not solve the underlying financing problem. A reform proposal should improve the program and deal honestly with its costs; simply expanding an entitlement without a payment plan does neither.
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