Rising Medicaid rolls in Massachusetts – the first state to require residents to have health insurance – is causing employers to push back.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, will propose his annual budget today. Included in that budget is a proposed $2,000-per-worker penalty on businesses that don’t pick up enough of the health insurance cost, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The proposal is an attempt to solve what Baker sees as a problem in Obamacare – low-income workers opt for Medicaid rather than high-deductible employer plans, raising costs for the state.
In Massachusetts, that’s becoming a problem. MassHealth, the state’s version of Medicaid, eats up nearly 40% of the state’s budget, even with unemployment in Massachusetts below 3%, according to the Journal.
But employers in the state say the proposal woulf punish them for a problem they didn’t cause, the Journal reported. They say the state could lower premiums by taking steps to lower health care costs, like discouraging people from using more expensive hospitals for routine care or repealing legislation that requires insurers to cover some specialty services and products.
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“It’s not the fault of employers that we have exploded the Medicaid budget,” Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, told the Journal.
The additional Medicaid burden isn’t restricted to Massachusetts. Around the country, employers say that rising insurance premiums are forcing them to go with high-deductible plans. That, in turn, drives employees to Medicaid.
“People are making rational decisions, Richard Lord, president and CEO of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, told the Journal. “If it’s going to cost them less and they are eligible for a subsidized product, they are choosing to do that.”
