Johanns: Report Reinforces Concerns Over Health Care Law's Medicaid Mandate

Statement

U.S. Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) today issued the following statement after Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman released a report detailing the devastating impact of the new health care law's Medicaid mandate:

"Unfortunately, today's report points out what we already knew - the health care 'reform' law is not reform at all. Throughout the debate, I warned that approximately half of the newly promised health insurance coverage was accomplished by simply dumping 16 million people on an already broken Medicaid program and telling Governors 'now it is your problem.'

"Now, the state's own analysis shows that Obamacare will force nearly one in five Nebraskans onto government-run health care that is currently so inadequate that 35 percent of Nebraska doctors won't even accept patients with a Medicaid card. The largest single Medicaid expansion in the program's history isn't going to feel like reform when citizens cannot find a doctor to treat their illnesses.

"In Nebraska, our state will have two choices - cut programs like K-12 education, Veterans' Affairs programs, and much-needed services or raise sales taxes, income taxes or property taxes - neither are good options. An annual $53 million to $76 million budget shortfall caused by this new Medicaid unfunded mandate would be the equivalent of eliminating the entire Nebraska State Patrol's budget and possibly much more. I can't imagine Nebraska citizens endorsing such a reduction, yet that is the type of no-win decisions that the new health care law forces on our state.

"We need to go back to the drawing board and actually give the American people real health care reform, not the expansion of failing policies that simply dump the problem onto state budgets and our citizens."

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