Much of that extra cost has been attributed to the trend in Republican states that opted out of the Medicaid expansion provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That means some people who earn less than 138 percent of the federal poverty line who would have qualified for Medicaid in expansion states will now instead be eligible only for premium subsidies via the online health insurance exchanges. Those subsidies will cost HHS more on average — about $9,000 per eligible person — than the $6,000 the feds would pay to cover those individuals via Medicaid, according to the report.
However, because not all states chose to expand eligibility for Medicaid under the health law, the Congressional Budget Office has predicted the government may cover 3 million fewer people on Medicaid by 2022, amounting to an estimated savings of about $80 billion by that year, according to the report.
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