The Mother of All Unintended Consequences

A number of unanticipated consequences of Obamacare have appeared, even before the major provisions take effect.

Thousands of elderly people have lost their Medicare Advantage plans, insurance companies have been forced to jack up their rates to cover the myriad of new mandates, many insurance companies have eliminated child-only policies, and over a hundred companies and unions — many of them supporters of the Obama administration — have been given waivers from the disastrous bill by the selfsame administration that inflicted it upon the nation.

But the mother of all unintended consequences of Obamacare may be coming down the pike in 2014. That is the year when the healthcare plan dumps 16 million people (and even more, if illegal aliens aren’t excluded) on Medicaid. Medicaid is the program that already covers at least 62 million poorer Americans.

Medicaid is partly funded by the federal government, but almost half the costs are paid by the states. It is a heavy burden on them even in the best of times, and some of them now border on insolvency.

Rick Perry of Texas was the first governor to talk about withdrawing from Medicaid and substituting a less expensive alternative devised by Texans, following the tastes of Texans. But now similar ideas are being discussed by officials in Nevada, South Carolina, Washington, and Wyoming.

Will this group of free thinkers regarding Medicaid swell as we get closer to 2014, the Year of the Great Dump? In the immortal words of Sarah Palin, “You betcha!”