February 26, 2013 11:18 AM UTC

Chris Christie Accepts Medicaid Expansion, Key Piece of Obamacare

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Newark Star-Ledger reports, Republican Gov. Chris Christie has agreed to expand New Jersey's Medicaid program to cover 300,000 uninsured residents, a decision that validates a key part of Obamacare:

As for his decision to expand Medicaid, the Republican governor, a critic of President Obama's Affordable Care Act, could reap up to $300 million by expanding the state program in the coming budget year…

…Before passage of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, people without children were not eligible unless they applied for welfare and earned no more than $140 a month. Allowing the expansion would reduce the burden on hospitals to treat uninsured patients, and the state, which partly reimburses those costs. The revised Medicaid program would shift 100 percent of the costs to the federal government for these new enrollees for the first three years, then gradually taper it to 90 percent. The state could expect $1.7 billion a year to cover the costs.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has received word from 39 governors about their plans for Medicaid: 22 — including nine Republicans — who said they would expand it, while 17 have turned it down.

Republicans did everything they could publicly to criticize Obamacare before the 2012 election, and many of those words could come back to haunt them in 2014. As we've said here before, there are several features of Obamacare that, once fully implemented, may look pretty good to a majority of Americans.