Arkansas to Virginia: More Medicaid brings ‘buyer’s remorse’

January 11, 2014: Heavy fog hangs over the State Capitol ahead of the swearing-in ceremony of Terry McAuliffe as Virginia's governor in Richmond, Virginia. (reuters)

Citing more than $200 million in “waste, fraud and abuse” in Virginia’s Medicaid program, Republican leaders say expanding the program now would be throwing good money after bad. Like lawmakers did in Arkansas.

Still, state Democrats and a handful of Republicans in the state Senate are pushing hard and fast to extend the indigent-care program to 400,000 additional lower-income Virginians this year.

Arkansas House Majority Leader Bruce Westerman said he saw the same hurry-up tactics in his state, with subsequent “buyer’s remorse.”

“We just put another layer of complexity on top of a broken system,” Westerman said in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.

Westerman’s Virginia counterpart, Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, said the House received “a three-page summary and a PowerPoint presentation” touting the benefits of a “private expansion” of Medicaid.

Click for more from watchdog.org.