Most don't understand that the free money already exists.
Poor people and those without insurance already receive some level of free health care. But there are limits on that free health care, and it is very low quality health care, and it is very expensive health care..
The taxpayers are paying for this free health care with local taxes, state taxes, and federal taxes, as well as by higher health care premiums.
Obamacare is merely a way to disburse the federal money in a different way that expands the amount of health care, improves the quality of the healthcare, and lowers the cost.
In the transition period between the two payment methods, the feds are paying both methods. And Obama said he would continue this for some unknown period, but eventually, the old method money would end.
When that happens, the "old free health care" will have to be paid for by only state and local taxes.
This is why the hospitals are pitching a fit and agitating for the state to expand medicaid. They know that this old federal funding is going to end and they can't absorb it, nor can they recoup it by charging the insurance companies higher prices.
As times go by, the state and local politicians also recognize and acknowledge that the day of reckoning is coming. If Obama is willing to compromise with them, they are willing to compromise with him.
So the states that compromised early on with Obama got the best deals, and those states that compromise later don't get as good of a deal, and those states that hold out to the end will go down in a big ball of flames
If you live in TN, your property taxes are going up, to pay for free health care.
If you live in one of the GOP states that won't expand Medicaid, Obama's gotcha by the ying yang and he will eventually start squeezing.
“...FREE MONEY...” What a novel concept...NOT!
When the Supreme Court ruled that the states could not be forced to expand Medicaid by the federal overlords, it removed from the Feds the ability to threaten to cut off all Medicaid funds if the state chose not to expand. That case took away the hammer the Feds like to use to force states to comply with D.C. dictates—i.e., continue to tax the state’s citizens for their share of the cost of a federal boondoggle while not allowing them to receive any of the funding for the boondoggle.
When the federal “free money” for the expansion runs out, the states that will be caught “by the ying yang” and be “squeezed” are the ones who volunteered to participate in this latest big government turkey expansion.
Despite the lies of the Soetoro and Haslam administrations, the Tennessee general assembly wasn’t buying—they still have fresh memories of the last expansion of a federal government medical program—TennCare—that started swallowing ever greater shares of the state budget.