65 Million Dollar Hole Appears in New Hampshire's DHHS Budget - Unexpetedly - Granite Grok

65 Million Dollar Hole Appears in New Hampshire’s DHHS Budget – Unexpetedly

Medicaid expansion is a trapThe New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services is reporting a $65 million dollar hole in its budget. The only people who didn’t see this coming were lawmakers who supported and expanded Medicaid and DHHS. Everyone else, you, me, us, knew that this expansion would create costs that would threaten the New Hampshire advantage of no sales or income tax.

Welcome to the real world.

Most of the overspending comes in three key areas. The state spent $24 million more than budgeted because of unanticipated increases in the rates paid to the companies that manage the state’s traditional Medicaid program for more than 100,000 qualified lowincome households.

Second, Medicaid caseloads were budgeted to decrease, but remained the same in 2016, resulting in another $10 million problem.

On top of that, the state’s payment to hospitals for uncompensated care was nearly $16 million more than budgeted.

Who in their left mind thought that expanding a public giveaway (even without ObamaCare driving people into Medicaid) would result in fewer takers? The aforementioned “lawmakers who supported and expanded Medicaid and DHHS,” that’s who.

Sorry. That’s not quite accurate. Those folks said one thing but I’m of the opinion that they knew better. Some wanted the “free money.” Other wanted to expand government. Too many wanted both. And all of them happily looked the other way when the threat of uncontrolled spending that comes with such programs peeked over the church pew and waved it’s hairy claw at them.

 I won’t burden you with quotes from either Democrats or Republicans who thought this was a good idea. The same people who couldn’t bring themselves to add a work provision for the abundance of healthy working age residents who signed up before the ink was even dry on Gov. Maggie Hassan’s signature.

But the legislature is blaming DHHS.

DHHS is claiming that the Legislature knew what they were doing.

I think they are all at fault.

But none of that matters now. If significant changes are not made this song and dance will repeat itself year in and year out with taxpayers paying a bit more than a buck a dance for the privilege.

H/T Dave Solomon – Union Leader

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