Three Studies Indicate That Health Reform Will Reduce State Budgets
States can relax a little about the impact health care reform will have on their budgets, particularly the large expansion of Medicaid. States have been made skittish about their state budgets because of structural deficits and recession-driven shortfalls. Thus, even the fact that the Medicaid expansion will be 100% federally funded for the first few years, and ultimately 90% federally funded from 2020 onward, has not been completely comforting. The states are nervous about predictions that some analysts have made that the implementation of national health reform will add difficult levels of new spending to their budgets. This has the potential to dampen states’ willingness and confidence to embark on aggressive implementation efforts.
But the predictions of dire impact on state budgets are not accurate. At least three studies now estimate that health care reform will have a positive impact on state budgets, reducing spending in an array of areas to more than offset the marginal increase in state funds spent on Medicaid.
First, there is a very recent report issued by the Urban Institute (commissioned by First Focus), “Net Effect of the Affordable Care Act on State Budgets.” The report compares the increased costs states will experience due to the expansion of Medicaid coverage for low-income adults in 2014 with the savings states will realize from the law. The report takes into account savings that will come when states move people currently covered by Medicaid at income levels above 133% of the poverty level into the private insurance exchange, where the subsidies for premiums and co-pays are entirely federally financed. In Illinois, the FamilyCare program currently covers adults up to 185% of the poverty level with a 50% federal match. The Urban Institute’s report also takes into account the savings states will realize when new Medicaid beneficiaries no longer use uncompensated health care (mostly emergency room care) and state-funded mental health services.
The study does not take into account significant scheduled increases in the federal matching rate for Children’s Health Insurance or a variety of other health care cost savings that will be brought about under the reform law, but nevertheless it finds that state savings under the Affordable Care Act will exceed state costs by between $40.6 and $131.9 billion during 2014-19.
The Urban Institute study is consistent with earlier findings by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) and the Lewin Group that, on balance, states will realize significant net budgetary gains from the legislation. The contrary analyses, among other flaws, recognize or describe only state costs and not potential state gains.
The CEA report profiled 16 states, finding that each would experience net fiscal gains from the Affordable Care Act, totaling between $3 billion and $4 billion a year for all 16 states combined. The states were Arkansas, California, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wyoming.
The Lewin report found that, on balance, the Affordable Care Act will save states $106.8 billion during 2010-19, including $100.6 billion in 2014-19.
