To win the argument over block grants for Medicaid in Congress, the GOP needs to show that states can manage the most challenging part of Medicaid — the long-term-care component.

For all the debate over whether Texas should expand Medicaid as Obamacare envisions, there has been little debate over a more important question: How should Texas reform its current Medicaid program?

The health law won’t come close to reaching “universal coverage” if the nation’s governors refuse to expand their Medicaid programs. Which is why these governors, and most especially the 30 Republicans among them, have substantial power and leverage to bend national health-care policy in their direction — if they play their strong hand correctly.

This week, TPPF released a follow-on report, co-authored by James Capretta, outlining the broader reform strategy for the Medicaid program.  The report describes in some detail the provisions which should be included in federal legislation to convert Medicaid into a block grant.

Governor Rick Scott’s decision to take federal Obamacare money to expand his state’s Medicaid program was unsurprising. Amidst declining political fortunes, he was under intense pressure by local health care firms to accept the new cash.

Every state, including Texas, is struggling with the budgetary pressures associated with rapidly rising Medicaid spending. Our goal was to develop recommendations that would allow the state of Texas to continue to provide vital services to patients even as the program would become more efficient and affordable for the state’s taxpayers, both in the short and long term.

One assertion by Mitt Romney in the presidential debate especially caught my attention. He said he would turn Medicaid into a block grant to the states and that they would “get what they got last year, plus inflation, plus 1 percent.”

Nothing ignites liberal ire like pointing out the problems plaguing Medicaid. 

In a just-published op-ed, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) economist Alex Brill sets forth two options to reduce health care costs in Illinois' Medicaid system. If enacted, these efforts would be a part of a broader reform effort which is necessary to avert dramatic cuts in the future.

The Medicaid drug program wasted $329 million nationwide in 2009 from states all too frequently reimbursing for a version of a drug that is more costly than another product with the exact same active ingredient, dose, form and bottle size.