The states not expanding Medicaid coverage under ObamaCare have the number of additional people they would cover with coverage to 133% of the poverty level shown on them. This represents a huge future savings for these states after 2022 for their state budgets when the federal government stops paying 90% of the bill for the added state dependents. Those living in the states in gold had best have piles of gold to pay the tax bills after 2022 for all of the people on Medicaid.
The CBO is predicting that ObamaCare expansion of Medicaid will add 9 million people on Medicaid by the end of 2014 and 13 million by the end of 2020. These additions and the future large increases in state budget costs will occur in the states in the above map in gold. Of course, Progressive Elitists will complain that the added 5 million people who might have been added in the blue-gray states have been sadly neglected in this redistribution of wealth. In fact, they like to complain that even more of those in poverty live in many of these blue-gray states. See the map below from one of their websites:
So the states not expanding Medicaid have an average 9.1% of their populations qualifying as below 133% of the poverty level, while the national average is 8.0% of the population. But one thing that is overlooked is that there is one single poverty level for the 48 contiguous states and higher levels for Alaska and Hawaii. So, this map of those below 133% of the poverty level has to be compared to one for the cost of living. Clearly, some people at 133% of the poverty level are much better off in low cost of living areas than are others at that level in high cost of living areas. The cost of living map:
Now we see that the states that refused to raise their Medicaid dependency levels to 133% of the poverty level are mostly states with most of their population below or at the national average in the cost of living. Most of the states that raised the Medicaid eligibility level to 133% have most of their populations living in high or average cost of living areas. Of the 24 states not raising the Medicaid eligibility level to 133%, Wyoming, Montana, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Maine are the only ones mostly at the average or higher in cost of living.
There is a reason that Republican-dominated states tend to have lower than average costs of living. The governments in those states mostly extract less from the private sector to use in unproductive ways in the government-sector. Their present choice not to increase the eligibility for Medicaid in their states is a move to continue having a lower cost of living. That means that people in those states above 133% of the poverty level will continue to be better off than will people in the expensive government states that mostly raised their Medicaid eligibility levels under ObamaCare.
After 2022, when those mostly above average cost of living states have to pick up the cost of the 13 million people added to Medicaid, their cost of living will shoot up even higher. Their taxes will increase further and some of them will go bankrupt. More and more people will migrate out of those states and move to the states that did not raise their Medicaid eligibility levels. There will be a further easily seen lesson on the perils of redistribution and socialism. Socialist transformation and change will have seriously damaged the middle class who will have to pay the bills in the mostly Democrat states that made this bad choice to expand Medicaid.
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