New report provides cheaper estimate of Medicaid expansion costs for La.

A new report calculates it would cost Louisiana about $1 billion over 10 years to expand the Medicaid program and provide health insurance coverage to more of the state’s poor. As The Times-Picayune reports, that’s about a third of what Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration has estimated it would cost. The Medicaid expansion is the provision of the Affordable Care Act meant to help cover the poorest uninsured people. But the U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the 2010 federal health law gave states the option to reject this provision. Jindal, who opposes the law, has maintained the state will not participate in the expansion. The governor says he is philosophically opposed to further reliance on Medicaid, which he characterizes as an outdated program in a federal government that should be shrunk. Although the federal government would pick up the tab for the first three years, that share would eventually drop to 90%. The Jindal administration has estimated expanding Medicaid would cost the state $3.7 billion over a decade. In contrast, the report written for the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, concluded that it would cost the state $1.2 billion between 2013 and 2022. The expansion would make Medicaid coverage available to people with incomes up to $15,415 for an individual or $26,344 for a family of three. Read the full story here. You can also access the complete report, or just a summary of it, at the Kaiser Foundation’s website here.