Internal Documents Suggest $1B ACA Cost In Massachusetts

Oct. 11--The Patrick Administration could spend as much as $560 million in taxpayer dollars this year for free temporary Medicaid insurance plans for the hundreds of thousands of Bay Staters unable to sign up for Obama-care through the state's disastrous website, according to confidential documents obtained by the Herald.

The internal working papers -- marked "confidential draft" and confirmed by state officials last night -- show the cost of the temporary Medicaid plans for fiscal 2015 could reach as high as $560.2 million. That figure -- which would be covered by both state and federal taxpayers -- was listed on documents used by the state as it negotiates a Medicaid waiver with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

State officials, caught off-guard, scrambled to explain that the $560.2 million figure represents a high estimate and cautioned against drawing conclusions.

"The most important thing to note is that it's a working draft document and doesn't reflect a final determination," said Kristin Thorn, the state's Medicaid director.

Yet the documents offer the first public projection of just how much the expensive Obamacare plans will cost taxpayers, which the Patrick administration has consistently refused to reveal.

The $560.2 million estimate for fiscal 2015 is on top of the $138.7 million already spent on the plans last fiscal year -- bringing the total Obamacare price tag just for temporary insurance to nearly $700 million.

On top of that, Gov. Deval Patrick told a state panel this week the total cost for constructing, then rebuilding, the state's Obamacare website is $254 million.

Those figures combined amount to $954 million.

Patrick last month dismissed as "spurious" a Pioneer Institute report projecting the total cost of Obamacare at over $1 billion. Joshua Archambault, the Pioneer researcher who authored the report, said yesterday, "This looks like taxpayers are being fleeced. Not checking eligibility and giving free health insurance gets very expensive very fast. Gov. Patrick is leaving the new administration a gaping hole in the state budget."

Some 306,000 Bay Staters are on the temporary Medicaid plans, and many of them are making too much money to qualify under ordinary circumstances. But since last winter, the embattled state Health Connector has been enrolling them in these free plans because its glitch-infested Web portal blocked them from signing up for normal health plans.

The state has promised that all of these people will gradually transition off the free plans by March 2015.

The Herald has reported that while the Patrick administration has touted the temporary plans as necessary to prevent the poor from losing health care, many have complained the plans don't cover their previous primary care physicians, specialists and prescription drugs.

The Herald reported yesterday that two top Congressional Republicans are accusing both the Obama and Patrick administrations of misusing federal Medicaid money by setting up the temporary plans in the first place.

U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, demanded answers in a joint letter to the Obama administration.

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