Pennsylvania Opts out of Medicaid Expansion

          Pennsylvania has effectively exercised its option of not expanding Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for the poor, which is a key part of the federalization of health insurance approved by the liberal Democratic Congress and signed into law by United States President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in 2009.

           When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the so-called Affordable Care Act, it declared its requirement that states expand Medicaid, under the threat of losing all of their federal funding for the program, unconstitutional.  The coercion of the States violated their sovereign rights, under the principle of federalism.  Some of the States among the 26 that had sued the federal government have voluntarily opted to expand the program, while several others opted out of Medicaid expansion.

           Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, has not officially announced his decision on whether to expand Medicaid, but he had been asking the Obama Administration questions about the nature of the expansion and the expected costs.  Under the federalization of health insurance plan, the federal government would pick up most of the initial costs for the expansion of Medicaid, but the States would bear an increasing burden of billions of dollars over time. The big-government entitlement program is already expensive, riddled with waste, fraud and abuse, burdensome and ineffective. The Governor has asserted that there is no deadline for him to decide to expand the federal welfare program.  The Commonwealth did not appropriate any money in its recently-passed budget for the implementation of Medicaid expansion, thereby effectively opting the Keystone State out of the expansion, at least for now.

           Corbett resisted pressure from welfare advocates to opt into the federal plan to expand Medicaid.  He deserves gratitude from Pennsylvania taxpayers for resisting the pressure.  We conservatives should continue to oppose the expansion of Medicaid and the federalization of health insurance and instead support market-based reforms, the elimination of the prohibition of purchasing insurance across state lines and medical malpractice tort reform.