Dems Fight To Protect A $600 Billion Medicaid Tax Scam That Joe Biden Tried To Kill

Here’s how this particular scam works.

States tax health care providers and use those funds to help cover their Medicaid costs. Then, the states turn around and increase what they pay these same providers for Medicaid benefits – effectively covering the cost of the tax. Then, because of the way Medicaid is financed, the states can bill the federal government for half of the spending increase.

Let’s say, for example, a state imposes a provider tax on hospitals that raises $100 million. And then it returns that $100 million to the hospitals in the form of higher Medicaid reimbursement rates. There’s been no increase in benefits. Providers aren’t better off. But the state gets an extra $50 million from the federal government’s matching fund, money that it can use for anything it wants. (The fed pays states up to 90% to cover the cost of expanding Medicaid under Obamacare.)

An Oregon state representative once called it a “dream tax.” States can use Medicaid to steal money from the federal treasury. It’s such a wonderful dream that Alaska is the only state in the nation that hasn’t leveraged it.

The amount that the Federal Government pays to the states through Medicaid is larger than some states budgets.  It’s so bad that once upon a time, even Joe Biden (when he some brain cells still working) called it a scam.

This is the hill that Texas Rep Al Green was willing to die on on the night he was ejected from the Congressional floor.  Medicaid.