The Entitlement Behemoth: Medicaid?The Other Medical Crisis
Apr 29th, 2017 | By Dr. Jim EckmanDuring the recent failure of Congress to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA; aka Obamacare) with a scaled down medical entitlement, few noticed one of the key elements of both the ACA and the revision proposed by the Republican Congress. That key element is Medicaid. Let me explain. Medicaid was created more than 50 years ago as a part of the Medicare program advocated by Lyndon B. Johnson and passed by the Congress in 1965. Medicaid was designed as a small program to cover poor people?s medical bills. But over these past five decades, Medicaid has surpassed Medicare in the number of Americans it covers, for it provides for the medical needs of one in five Americans (74 million people) from the womb to the grave. How has it grown into this bureaucratic behemoth?