On March 1, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) released a report examining the impact of the national health care reform law on state health costs.  It estimates that the Medicaid expansion and health exchanges subsidies will bring states a combined $82.3 billion in new federal funding but offers no assessment of states’ net spending change.  It also notes that Medicaid beneficiaries insured under the expansion will have lower costs than existing beneficiaries because they are less likely to have health problems.

From the report:

With the enactment of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 on March 30, 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) became law, fundamentally changing health insurance and access to health care in the United States. Using the Urban Institute’s Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model (HIPSM), we estimate important effects of the ACA at the state level: the increase in insurance coverage, coverage and subsidies in the new nongroup health benefit exchanges, Medicaid enrollment and costs under the expansion and total new federal spending on Medicaid and subsidies. We provide results by state, by region and by two useful groups of states. Key results are also displayed on maps. For ease of comparison, we simulate the ACA as if fully implemented in 2011 and contrast the results with HIPSM’s prereform baseline results for 2011. These results complement an earlier policy brief that analyzed the national impact of health reform as if implemented in 2010.

Full Report: Increased Insurance Coverage and Federal Spending on the Exchanges and Medicaid (PDF | 465 KB) 

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2011). Increased insurance coverage and federal spending on the exchanges and Medicaid. Buettgens, M., Holahan, J., and Carroll, C.