New Beacon Study Finds Medicaid Expansion Would Cost Tennesseans
A new study finds that Tennessee families will be adversely affected by Governor Bill Haslam’s plan to expand Medicaid.
According to our study, published by Federalism in Action, Medicaid expansion will have several negative economic consequences in the Volunteer State. These include declining personal incomes for Tennesseans, as well as a shrinking of the state’s private sector as a whole. “Policymakers should carefully reconsider Governor Haslam’s proposal to expand Medicaid,” said State Budget Solutions (SBS) CEO J. Scott Moody. “It will put the state’s long-run economic growth on a downward trajectory, resulting in a decline in personal income growth of $3.6 billion.”
Lindsay Boyd, Policy Director of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, also affirms the study’s findings. “Medicaid was a program designed to help address the needs of the poorest among us, but when that same program leads to significant loss of income, puts Tennesseans out of work, and diminishes opportunities to find new jobs, the program has failed,” Boyd asserts.
You can read the full study here and check out a helpful infographic here.