Despite the House’s action, the Missouri Foundation for Health hosted a forum about Medicaid expansion at the Osage Center in Cape Girardeau Monday night.
Ryan Barker is the Vice President for Health Policy at the Foundation. He presented the facts about the impact of adding about 300,000 new Missourians to the Medicaid program.
He presented both sides of the argument, saying specifically that this was an enticing but potentially risky measure.
"The Medicaid expansion is a really good deal right now,” Barker said. “There's a lot of federal money that would be available, but there is nothing that prevents congress from coming back and saying ‘you know what, that was a little too good of a deal, we're going to try to reduce the debt, we're going to put more of the costs onto states.’"
Proponents included Teresa Wilke. Wilke is a grant consultant for the Hanover Research health development center based in Washington, D.C. She was concerned about the effect on hospitals.
"I have hospitals that are coming and trying to find ways to pay for their charity care as a stopgap measure, where the legislation actually had this written in for the Medicaid expansion which is supposed to cover that block of individuals,” Wilke said. “And I think that's just the way the legislation should work, and we should give the whole system an opportunity to function the way it was originally written."
