Report: Medicaid spending up, but per capita growth slows

A new report found that spending on Medicaid rose nearly 14 percent on average in the last fiscal year, largely because of a tide of newly eligible enrollees in the 29 states, including Ohio, that had expanded the program by then to cover millions more low-income adults (Source: “Medicaid Costs Rise, Report Says, but Not More Than Most States Expected,” New York Times, Oct. 15, 2015).

But for most of those states, the per-member, per-month cost of the new enrollees was not higher — in a few cases, in fact, it was lower — than expected, according to the report released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Almost all of the additional spending was covered by federal funds, which are paying the entire cost of expanding Medicaid through 2016 and at least 90 percent thereafter.

According to Governor Kasich’s office, Ohio Medicaid spending per member dropped from $8,304 during the Governor’s first year in office (2011) to $7,959 in the most recent fiscal year (ending in June, 2015) (Source: “Ohio Governor John Kasich's Medicaid Expansion: Successful Governance Is Very Hard Work,” Forbes, Oct. 14, 2015).

The state government’s per person per month projected growth rate for Ohio Medicaid is 2.5 percent for fiscal year 2016 and 3.8 percent for fiscal year 2017.