This is from the Wall Street Journal:
The cost of covering people who qualified for Medicaid as part of the federal health law was significantly higher than expected in 2014, federal actuaries said Friday.
Adults who became eligible for Medicaid as a result of the health law’s expansion of the program to include most low-income Americans incurred average medical costs of $5,517, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services office of the actuary said.
That was about $1,000 higher than had initially been expected for the first full year of the expansion, which marked a sweeping change for the government program that will see its 50th anniversary later this month. ...
The exact number of Americans who gained coverage through Medicaid who wouldn’t have qualified before has been unclear. The CMS actuary said that for 2014, the newly eligible accounted for 4.3 million of 5.7 million new enrollees in the program. ...
More than 70 million Americans used the program in 2014, the actuary’s report said. In some states, as many as one in three residents are covered by it.
