The Denver Post, February 28, 2017: (Opinion) Republicans’ health care proposal would end Medicaid as we know it
“Medicaid saves lives, improves people’s health and reduces poverty in a comprehensive, cost-efficient manner. That’s why I worked to strengthen Medicaid throughout my 40 years in Congress, sponsoring laws expanding coverage to more low-income children and their parents, the elderly and low-income pregnant and postpartum women.
The beauty — and necessity — of Medicaid is that it automatically responds when needs grow, including during economic recessions and public health emergencies such as the opioid addiction epidemic, or when new but costly lifesaving treatments become available, as was the case for Hepatitis C cures. A per-capita cap or block grant ends the elasticity of the program as we know it and dramatically shifts the burden for unexpected and new costs to the states. As the office of Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who is a Republican, wrote, it would ‘result in the single largest transfer of risk ever from the federal government to the states.'”