Health Care Compact pushing initiative to put states in charge of health care
Pennsylvania has the fifth highest per capita federal health care spending in the United States, according to data from the Health Care Compact Alliance (HCCA), an initiative pushing for state governance over health care spending.
The HCCA compiled federal health care funding data for every state from the U.S. Census Bureau and compiled it on their website, adjusted for Medicare Part D data which the bureau acknowledged was not reliable.
“Those are just estimates but they’re reasonably accurate,” said Leo Linbeck III, vice chairman of the HCCA. “They’re meant to give folks an idea of the scale of funding in their state. There’s a wide variance on the money spent in each state [and] lot of that is driven by demographics. States with more senior citizens tend to consume more federal dollars.”
Pennsylvania spent nearly $47.5 billion on health care programs with federal dollars, coming in between Florida with over $58.8 billion and Illinois with nearly $40.05 billion.
Per capita, Pennsylvania also came in fifth, spending $3,764.29 federal taxpayer dollars on health care programs, coming in after Wisconsin with $3,870.71 and Louisiana with $3,552.26. While those states’ populations are 5.6 million and 4.5 million, respectively, Pennsylvania is supporting 12.6 million.
The state Department of Health appropriated $229.6 million for its 2010-2011 budget.
Federal spending on health care included Medicare Part A, B and D, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).
The HCCA, founded in January, is pushing for medical governance reform, said Mr. Linbeck, not health care reform. The idea is that the states would be free to make decisions about health care policy on their own, without following mandates from the federal government that may not work best in their state.
“The big benefits are that the state basically has control over its own health care regulation,” said Mr. Linbeck. “Right now the state has to comply with a myriad of fed regulations that are designed as one-size-fits-all solution. Pennsylvania’s a very different place than Idaho or Montana or Texas, so they’d be able to write the rules and write the regulation that best meets the needs of their citizens.”
He said there are activists in Pennsylvania discussing the compact with state legislators, but no bills have been introduced. Eleven states currently have bills in committees or on the floor to join the HCCA.
Linked to the problem of governance is the $37 trillion in Medicare’s unfunded liability, which costs every American approximately $120,000. Valued at $70 trillion before the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act was passed last year, Mr. Linbeck said it was still “pretty bleak.
As the unfunded Medicare liability is adjusted for inflation, the federal government cannot inflate its way out, he said.
“That’s twice as big as the federal debt,” said Mr. Linbeck. “Depending how long you want to look, over the next 10 years about $575 billion is slated to come out of Medicare to pay for the new health care entitlement, so that’s going to be painful. It’s bankrupt.”
