Medicaid
Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that provides medical care to nearly 70 million low-income individuals nationwide. It is a means-tested program that is managed by the states. People served by Medicaid are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, including low-income adults, their children, and people with certain disabilities. Medicaid has expanded rapidly since its inception in 1965. This could possibly be linked to the program's financial structure, in which the federal government matches state spending. The incentives are so dysfunctional that states have inflated the cost of health care. • State expenditures on Medicaid have increased from 0.2 percent of tax revenues in 1966 to an estimated 21 percent in 2005. • In 1975, 10 percent of the U.S. population was enrolled in Medicaid, by 2008, 19 percent were enrolled. • In FY 2010, Medicaid surpassed elementary and secondary education as the largest component of total state spending. • ObamaCare will add 18 million people to Medicaid rolls. Even without reform, Medicaid spending may increase by as much as 50 percent in 10 years. This is an unsustainable model. State-by-State Insurance Information is available at this site.
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Entitlements Sinking Federal Budgets in less than 10 years

12/11/14
from NCPA,
12/11/14:

The United States spent $3.5 trillion in 2014, ran a deficit of $486 billion and has a national debt of almost $18 trillion. While the 2014 deficit was lower than in previous years, Romina Boccia, a federal budgetary affairs fellow at the Heritage Foundation, says the drop was largely due to sequestration spending cuts, the expiration of long-term unemployment benefits, an improving economy and tax increases, resulting only in a short-term improvement. By 2024, federal spending is expected to increase by 66 percent, and 85 percent of that projected spending growth is due to increases in entitlement spending.

Where exactly are federal dollars going? According to Boccia, for each dollar of federal spending in 2013: - Twenty-five percent went to Medicare, Medicaid or other health care programs. - Twenty-four percent was spent on Social Security, the single largest federal spending program. - Twenty percent was spent on "income security" benefits, such as federal retirement and disability benefits, unemployment payments and food and housing programs. - Eighteen percent went toward national defense, while the rest was spent on interest payments, transportation and K-12 education. To put government spending into perspective, Boccia describes a typical median-income household earning $52,000 in 2014. Had that family structured its finances like the federal government did this year, it would have spent $60,400 in 2014 and put an additional $8,400 on its credit card, adding to an existing credit card debt of $308,000.

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