Medicaid is health overhaul's early success story

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Wrong.

The Supreme Court threw out the law's provision for mandatory expansion of Medicaid and its "or else" penalty. I.e., the intent was to withhold all Medicaid funds if a state didn't expand (as the penalty). But once the SCOTUS invalidated that provision, what was left was that the state could choose to expand or not, and if they did, they would get the extra money, and if they didn't, there would be no penalty.

Court holds that states have choice whether to join medicaid expansion

The Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion is divided and complicated. The bottom line is that: (1) Congress acted constitutionally in offering states funds to expand coverage to millions of new individuals; (2) So states can agree to expand coverage in exchange for those new funds; (3) If the state accepts the expansion funds, it must obey by the new rules and expand coverage; (4) but a state can refuse to participate in the expansion without losing all of its Medicaid funds; instead the state will have the option of continue the its current, unexpanded plan as is.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/06/court-holds-that-states-have-choice-whether-to-join-medicaid-expansion/