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Do States Regret Expanding Medicaid? Not Really

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Credit www.maxpixel.net/Doctor-Medicine-Health-Stetoscope-Medical-563428

In 2014, former President Barack Obama’s health care law gave states the option to expand Medicaid. North Carolina was among 18 states who chose not to expand the program. At the time, many officials in those states expressed concern over how much expansion would cost.Host Frank Stasio talks with health policy expert Mark Hall about his new analysis of the Affordable Care Act's medicare expansion over the past five years.

Medicaid opponents have called expansion a “proven disaster” for state budgets, asserting that states who expanded the program regret doing so. A new analysis from health policy expert Mark Hall argues otherwise. Hall is the director of the health law and policy program at Wake Forest University School of Law.

He joins Frank Stasio to talk about his new analysis based on five years of “Obamacare” expansion data. It concludes “the actual costs to states so far from expanding Medicaid are negligible or minor, and that states across the political spectrum do not regret their decisions to expand Medicaid.” 

Copyright 2018 North Carolina Public Radio

Amanda Magnus grew up in Maryland and went to high school in Baltimore. She became interested in radio after an elective course in the NYU journalism department. She got her start at Sirius XM Satellite Radio, but she knew public radio was for her when she interned at WNYC. She later moved to Madison, where she worked at Wisconsin Public Radio for six years. In her time there, she helped create an afternoon drive news magazine show, called Central Time. She also produced several series, including one on Native American life in Wisconsin. She spends her free time running, hiking, and roller skating. She also loves scary movies.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.