Empower Wisconsin | Jan. 21, 2020

MADISON — Memo to Gov. Tony Evers and his fellow Medicaid expanders: This is why taking the “free” federal money is a bad idea. 

As the New York Post reports, the Empire State’s governor is looking to locals to fill a massive budget hole punched through by escalating Medicaid costs. 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo threw down the gauntlet in a bid to close the state’s yawning $6 billion budget deficit, suggesting that New York City and other local governments cough up more for a massive Medicaid bill.

“The situation is unsustainable,” Cuomo said during his annual State of the State speech Wednesday in Albany.

At the heart of the fiscal hole are the exploding costs of the state’s $77 billion Medicaid program for the needy, the costs of which are meant to be split between the federal, state and local governments.

In order to help local governments abide with a state-imposed 2 percent property tax cap, the governor and the Legislature agreed six years ago to pick up the added costs for the Medicaid program and freeze payments made by New York City and the counties.

Thanks to an expansion of Medicaid allowed as part of the Affordable Care Act, 95 percent of New Yorkers now have medical coverage.

But now, surging Medicaid costs account for about two-thirds of the state’s projected $6 billion shortfall for the 2020-2021 fiscal year.

So much for all that “free” money. 

Wisconsin state Rep. Joe Sanfelippo (R-New Berlin), chairman of the Assembly Health Committee, pointed out that billionaire Democrat presidential candidate and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to double down on the not-so-affordable Affordable Care Act. 

“And Bloomberg wants to ‘build on Obamacare’. How’s that working for NY?” Sanfelippo tweeted Monday. 

https://twitter.com/RepSanfelippo/status/1219270460149583875

Read the full New York Post story here.