Obama uses hospital funds to push Medicaid expansion
MIAMI (AP) – The Obama administration is dialing up the pressure on a handful of states that have resisted expanding coverage for their low-income residents under the federal health care overhaul.
The leverage comes from a little-known federal fund that helps states and hospitals recoup some of the costs of providing care for uninsured patients. The administration says states wouldn’t need as much extra help with costs for the uninsured if they expanded Medicaid.
The top two targets so far are Florida and Texas, states with large numbers of uninsured residents that have received several billion dollars in recent years from Washington under the so-called low income pool.
Florida’s hospital funding is the first of the nine states to expire, in June. But officials in Tennessee, California, Massachusetts, Arizona, Hawaii, Kansas and New Mexico are watching closely.
