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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nOur country is over 22 trillion dollars in debt and growing.\nReducing our spending is never easy especially for our government. We have a\nlot of obligations from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Defense, Veterans,\nInfrastructure and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There aren’t that many places to cut spending in our\nnation’s budget. Social Security eats up about 23 percent of our budget. Our\ngovernment is supposed to start sending me a check every month in just over a\nyear. After paying into it since I was 18 years old, I would like to collect\nit. Medicare accounts for 15 percent of our federal budget. I\njust got my card in the mail so I’m not voting to reduce Medicare benefits. I\nknow what medical bills can do to anyone financially. Over 65 percent of the\nbankruptcies in America take place over medical issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Medicaid is the third largest mandatory spending program in\nthe federal budget. Medicaid requires almost ten percent of our budget. We\ncan’t reduce it much if any because one out of five Americans are dependent on\nMedicaid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a good chance that almost any American could end up\non Medicaid so don’t be smug. You could end up with a medical challenge that\ncould put you in a nursing home with all kinds of required specialized care\nthat could financially wipe you out and you would have no choice but to go on\nMedicaid. I hope this never happens to you, but it happens to millions of\nAmericans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Medicaid program is jointly funded by the federal\ngovernment and the states. The federal government pays states for a\nspecified percentage of program expenditures, called the Federal Medical\nAssistance Percentage (FMAP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Federal spending on Medicaid projected for 2019 is 406\nbillion, almost one-tenth of the $4.7 trillion federal budget. Money is\nsupplemented by the states, so total spending on Medicaid services will be\nabout $593 billion for this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the Affordable Care Act the federal government paid\n100 percent of the cost of Medicaid expansion coverage from 2014 to 2016. The\nfederal share dropped to 95 percent in 2017, 94 percent in 2018, and 93 percent\nin 2019 and will settle at 90 percent in 2020 and each year thereafter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year, the average annual premiums for an\nemployer-sponsored insurance plan for an individual were slightly more than\n$6,000. Just two years ago, Medicaid spent an average of $6,641 per person\ncovered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Medicaid is a jointly funded Federal-State health insurance\nprogram for low-income and needy people. It covers children, the aged, blind,\nand\/or disabled and other people who are eligible to receive federally assisted\nincome maintenance payments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program)\ncover nearly 70 million people, or again about 1 in 5 people in the\ncountry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am never an advocate for more taxes, but our entitlements\nrequire big financing and the money has to come from some place. The money will\nnot come just from the one percent of America’s wealthy. All of us will pay –\nmore. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Dr. Glenn Mollette Our country is over 22 trillion dollars in debt and growing. Reducing our spending is never easy especially for our government. We have a lot of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":45250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}