Last week Kansas Governor Sam Brownback announced that the state would cut spending and transfer money from other areas of the budget to fill a hole generated by Brownback’s signature tax cuts.
A significant portion of the funds Brownback intends to transfer are only available because of Obamacare.
Brownback offered his proposal for closing that hole last week, a mixture of spending cuts and transferring funds from other parts of the budget to fill it. And second biggest of those transfers is $55 million in revenue from a Medicaid drug rebate program that was bolstered under the Affordable Care Act. […]
What the ACA did was allow Medicaid managed care (which is different than traditional fee-for-service) to participate in the drug rebate program. […]
Obamacare also increased the rebate rates, from 15.1 percent of the average manufacturer price for most brand-name drugs to 23.1 percent, and from 11 percent to 13 percent for generic drugs. The exact impact can be hard to suss out, but according to [George Washington University professor] Bauen’s analysis of federal data, Kansas saw an increase in rebates from $60 million in 2009 to $90 million in 2012.
This isn’t something Brownback would ever boast of, but it’s enough to know that they know.
The Brownback administration knows Obamacare is helping them dig out of a hole of their own making. They’re all too happy to take advantage of it now that their own asses are on the line.