by Chris Jacobs

The release by the Louisiana Department of Health late Friday afternoon of an updated study showing the jobs benefit of Medicaid expansion concedes an important point pointed out by the Pelican Institute over 16 months ago. This year’s study admits that the 2018 paper over-counted the federal dollars and jobs associated with Medicaid expansion, because it failed to subtract for the many people who forfeited federal subsidies when they transitioned from Exchange coverage to Medicaid after expansion.

However, the researchers have yet to offer an explanation—or a retraction—of their inflated claims in last year’s paper. Nor have the Department of Health and LSU begun to answer the many questions about the circumstances surrounding these flawed studies.

While correcting one error, this year’s study also contains other questionable claims and assumptions:

  • The 2019 study discusses substitution effects, whereby federal Medicaid dollars merely replace other forms of health care spending. However, unlike a Montana study in which the researchers cite in their work, the Louisiana paper apparently does not quantify instances where federal dollars substituted for dollars previously spent by individuals or employers—thereby inflating the supposed impact of Medicaid expansion. That apparent omission also means the researchers did not quantify the number of people who dropped private coverage to join Medicaid expansion—which internal Department of Health records suggest is larger than the Department has publicly admitted.
  • The 2019 study claims that the federal dollars attributable to Medicaid expansion declined by only 4.4% from Fiscal Year 2017 ($1.85 billion) to Fiscal Year 2018 ($1,768 billion). Yet, the number of jobs attributed to these federal dollars decreased by 25.5%, from 19,195 in 2017 to 14,263 in 2018. This drop in the jobs impact suggests significant changes to the economic modeling used in the 2018 study when compared to this year’s paper. Yet, the researchers provide no explanation for this decline, or any changes in their methodology.
  • While not explaining the decline in the jobs outcomes compared to last year’s paper, the 2019 study also does not explain many other figures cited in the paper. For instance, the paper discusses—but does not include a specific dollar figure for—the federal dollars forfeited by individuals who switched from Exchange coverage to Medicaid expansion. Particularly given the errors in last year’s paper, the researchers had an obligation to “show their work,” and provide clear and transparent calculations explaining their conclusions. They did not do so.

The researchers also fail to note that, their study’s claims to the contrary, Louisiana has barely created any jobs since Medicaid expansion took effect. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in June 2016, the month before expansion took effect, Louisiana had 1,979,100 jobs. According to the most recent federal data, Louisiana’s non-farm payrolls now stand at 1,981,000 jobs—a meager gain of 1,900 jobs in over three years. With Louisiana having over 10,000 more jobs one year before expansion took effect than it does today, the real-life data show that greater dependence on the federal government has not provided the economic boom that the study’s authors claim.

Rather than relying on an expansion of the welfare state to generate jobs—an agenda that has not worked, as the past three years have demonstrated—Louisiana should instead reform its Medicaid program as part of a broader agenda to create jobs and opportunity for the state. The people of Louisiana deserve real change in their lives, not flawed, taxpayer-funded studies attempting to defend the failed status quo.