The Seattle Times reported on March 17th that Walgreen Drug Stores throughout the state would no longer take new Medicaid patients starting next month. This follows the decision of Bartell Drugs last month to stop taking new Medicaid patients. Fred Meyer and Safeway continue to take new Medicaid patients, but do so at no profit. Walgreen's action is consistent with fewer providers accepting Medicaid patients throughout the country.
Medicaid began in 1965 as an insurance program for children of poor families, the disabled, and certain individuals needing long term care. Funding was a 50/50 proposition between state and federal tax payers. The original budget was $500 million, yet by 1970 the cost of the program was $5 billion. Medicaid has now grown into the largest entitlement in the United States with a cost in 2008 of $330 billion and a projected cost of $580 billion in 2013 with the existing program. (Washington Policy Center Policy Brief)
As the number of Medicaid recipients has grown, the program has become one of the top three budget items for virtually every state in the country. As state budgets have been cut, funding for individual Medicaid patients has decreased and their access to health care has likewise diminished. As reported in the New York Times (here), this is a crisis occurring throughout the country.
One of the provisions of ObamaCare is a massive expansion of Medicaid, resulting in one out of five US citizens receiving their health care through the entitlement program. It is foolhardy at best and pure lunacy at worst to place more patients in a bankrupt insurance plan where the existing members are experiencing more and more difficulty finding care.