After the COVID-19 pandemic, America continues to push ahead in its government dependency. According to the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), the United States will have 100 million individuals on Medicaid in the next 72 days.
That number means roughly one-third of all Americans are about to be on the government health care assistance program. “For years, FGA has been warning about the rising number of people on government welfare programs. Now, we’re nearing a grim milestone—nearly one-third of the country will be on Medicaid,” said FGA Data and Analytics Director Hayden Dublois,.
“Our research and data show as welfare enrollment increases, workforce participation decreases. We’re in the midst of a nationwide workforce crisis, yet the Biden administration is pushing policies to entice people into government dependency at record levels while limiting opportunities to achieve the American Dream” Dublois continued.
The Center Square reports that the FGA says that the emergency declaration has led to 24 million enrollees in Medicaid nationwide, with more than 21 million of which would not have qualified for the program under previous standards:
“The pandemic-era policy keeping more than 21 million ineligible enrollees on Medicaid is costing taxpayers more than $16 billion per month. Despite the recently enacted legislation allowing states to redetermine eligibility beginning in April, the Biden administration is slow walking the process and hoping states will be sluggish to act,” Dublois said. “In approximately 76 days, 100 million people will be on Medicaid. States should begin preparing now so that they can remove the millions of ineligible enrollees and reclaim program integrity as quickly as possible.”
To break the numbers down by states, California alone has nearly 15 million Medicaid recipients as of Aug. 31. New York has a reported 7.6 million recipients while Texas and Florida have 5.6 million enrollees in the most recently available data.