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[MM Curator Summary]: The PHE takes another $14B a month from taxpayers and spends it on people who are not eligible for Medicaid (according to the Op-Ed writer here and in the WSJ, anyways).
WASHINGTON (TND) — On this week’s “Waste of the Week,” Medicaid is overspending and costing taxpayers $16 billion a month. Founder of OpenTheBooks.com, Adam Andrzejewski, joined The National Desk Friday with the details.
(Video: The National Desk)
The U.S. is more than three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, and President Joe Biden and announced plans to extend the federal public health emergency into the new year, leaving in place a Medicaid policy that was supposed to be temporary; it’s now costing taxpayers billions of dollars, Andrzejewski’s organization found.
The states lose a combined $1.6 billion a month, and the federal government pays another approximately $14 billion monthly on the new spending, The Wall Street Journal reported.
That comes from keeping 21 million people on Medicaid even though they earn too much money, as Biden plans to keep them permanently on the program that provides free or low-cost health coverage to low-income people,” according to a news release from Open The Books.
“So, in March of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Congress threw extra money into Medicaid on the promise that states had to cover everybody regardless of income. And you can take that as a good policy. During the pandemic, people needed health care coverage,” Andrzejewski said. “Fast forward to today, there are 21 million people on this program – costing taxpayers – who make too much money. They don’t qualify for the program — 21 million people. They are costing an extra $16 billion a month.”
Andrzejewski and The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat dive further into this topic, as well as the State Department spending $275,000 to develop a video game for people 15 and up to “counter disinformation.”
Watch the video above for their full conversation.
WSJ article