Conservative Radio's Jay Weber wants Democrats to Apologize to Scott Walker for demanding Medicaid Expansion!

There's more people on Medicaid than there should be? Saving money is "compassionate," not saving lives by providing health care? Republicans shouldn't have to pay anything to keep the public healthy, magical wizards should do it? Oh no, Medicaid participation turned out to be more than originally thought!

The genius that made these clueless comments, WISN's Jay Weber, is telling "every moron Democrat" to apologize to Scott Walker now. You see, Walker was right about states still having to pony up to pay for Medicaid expansion. The other half of the story Weber was too big a "dope" to look at was the higher costs states would have to pay turning down Medicaid expansion.

Gov. Scott Walker and the Legislature's opposition to the law is projected to cost $678.6 million in state tax dollars through the 2017 fiscal year.

All the while covering fewer people while resulting in higher health care costs overall for everyone else. What a deal? In the audio clip below, Sen. Alberta Darling admitted to Weber the state had a $700 million hole in the budget for gods sake, and that's without expansion. Gee, I wonder how much Ohio has to pay for covering more people?

Ohio taxpayers will be on the hook for over $130 million to meet the 5 percent state match, more than double the projected $55.5 million.

Yup, that's it, and a whole lot less than Wisconsin, unless you have a different way of doing math. Walker is also doling out $30 million from the general fund so hospitals won't lose money caring for the uninsured (the fed is giving $30 million as well). Oddly, Republicans screamed about a similar backstop plan in the ACA marketplaces that helped insurers recover some of their lost revenues. Guess that's somehow different? 

Weber should be fired for not just radio malpractice, lying, but for being such a sycophantic Walker "stooge."  Dope and stooge were two of Weber's words in the clip below...back at ya.



Liberal Media? Weber started as a news reporter, and then became news director. Yea, real liberal media...

Scott Walker’s message is absolutely clear on this; he wants to save money by cutting off as many people as he can from health care via reductions in access to Medicaid (BadgerCare). This isn’t about saving people’s lives, saving them years of agonizing pain, or reducing the rising cost of health care, this is about saving general revenue dollars for future tax cuts.  

Weber brought up the usual one-sided trashing of Medicaid expansion by such publications as the Wall Street Journal and National Review, and gave no attribution this time around. Right wing tabloids never report how much states would pay if they didn't expand the program (they paying about 40% of the cost, not the ACA's a measly 10%). Analysts have found that without change, costs would skyrocket for everybody else. So instead of right wing spin, here are the facts:

States opting out of the expansion of Medicaid is projected both to drive up insurance costs and to save the States relatively small amounts (with some, like Minnesota, showing up to a billion in new revenue under the program).

The 22 states that didn't expand Medicaid eligibility last year saw their costs to provide health care to the poor rise twice as fast as states that extended benefits. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of Medicaid directors showed that those that didn't broaden coverage saw their Medicaid costs rise 6.9 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2015. The 29 states that took President Obama up on his offer to foot the bill saw their costs rise only 3.4 percent.

That 3.4% rise is what Walker is whining about. Keep in mind, that’s modest when you consider participation rose 18% – 3 times as much as non-expansion states.

A National Review article inadvertently ripped into a purely Republican “private plan” for expansion that increased costs...but sure, that's Obama's fault?

Arkansas reached an unprecedented agreement with the administration to accept the Obamacare expansion, but only under the condition that the newly eligible population would enroll in private health plans … They called it the “private option,” and claimed it would control costs.

The private option was supposed to be “budget-neutral” for the federal government, but federal auditors have calculated it will cost $778 million more than expected over just the first three years. The Arkansas Republican “private option” ended up increasing the cost of the ACA and the state.