Marc Joffe of the Cato Institute writes about the fiscal problems imposed upon Medicaid by the repeated extensions of the Covid state of emergency:

A largely forgotten piece of Covid-19 legislation, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, made major changes to the Medicaid program. First, it increased the federal share of Medicaid costs by 6.2 percentage points while the pandemic state of emergency remained in force. To receive the additional federal support, states had to keep beneficiaries on the Medicaid rolls unless they either moved out of state or asked to be dropped from the program.
These changes were expected to be temporary but will now remain in place through 2022 and beyond. On October 13, health and human services secretary Xavier Becerra issued the eleventh renewal of the nation’s Coronavirus Public Health Emergency. The emergency, which began on January 27, 2020, will now continue through January 11, 2023 unless Becerra explicitly terminates it. More likely, Becerra will extend the emergency once again in January, since Covid-19 case rates will likely rise during and after the holiday season. Case rates are already spiking in Europe, a harbinger of future U.S. trends.

The latest episode of the Capital Record features the one and only Andrew Stuttaford, chatting with David about the debacle in the U.K. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.