Medicaid expansion cost $1 trillion, double the estimate Harris would make it worse

Kamala Harris’ plans for America’s health-care system are, like the rest of her agenda, a mysterious enigma.But the biggest clue to her intentions is surely her budget-busting support for ObamaCare — and that should terrify taxpayers. According to our new research, ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion has cost more than $1 trillion over the past 10 years — an unaffordable tab that will grow even faster under a Harris administration.Medicaid expansion was the centerpiece of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, popularly known as ObamaCare.It remains the Democratic Party’s template for health-care reform, including Harris’ since-reversed 2019 promise to enact “Medicare for All.” The policy rests on the idea that the federal government can effectively provide affordable coverage to every American.

Since 2014, 40 states and Washington DC have bought into this lie by adding millions of able-bodied adults to the program’s rolls.The Biden-Harris administration has cheered Medicaid expansion, while pushing holdout states to get on board.But neither Harris nor her boss have paid any mind to the staggering price tag. States expected that extending Medicaid coverage to non-disabled, higher-income adults would cost taxpayers about $450 billion up to this point.

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Never miss a story.Instead, their cost overruns have reached $574 billion and counting — more than double what they anticipated. The red ink is growing faster, too: We found that expansion cost 180% more than anticipated in 2023 alone.For Democrats like Harris, the cost overruns are a feature, not a bug, reflecting the reality that more people are signing up for government-run coverage. States initially estimated that only 6.5 million able-bodied adults would join the expanded prog...