Santorum: End Medicaid As A Federal Entitlement Program

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, who says he is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination, says that the second thing the next president should do to deal with the federal debt crisis—after signing legislation to repeal Obamacare—is end Medicaid as a federal entitlement.

Santorum likened his idea of ending Medicaid as a federal entitlement to the landmark legislation he helped push through a Republican-majority Senate in 1996 that ended welfare as a federal entitlement.

“So on Medicaid we need to do the same thing,” Santorum said in an Online With Terry Jeffrey interview. “We need to repeal the federal entitlement, which is just a perverse incentive for the states to spend more money. And turn the program back” to the states.

Santorum said that ending Medicaid as a federal entitlement and giving states block grants to run the program themselves, according to state-based designs, could yield positive benefits similar to those that he says followed the 1996 welfare reform bill.

“What we did, we said: Look, welfare is a state issue,” said Santorum. “It's something the states basically manage already. It's just a federal entitlement, and the federal government has a very prescriptive program on how the state runs it. But the state runs welfare policy. So what we said is we need to end the federal entitlement. We need to give a block of money to the states. We need to pare back some of these strings attached to this money, and let the states devise their own program.

“What happened?” said Santorum. “Welfare rolls decreased by over 50%, poverty levels went down, people who weren’t working and were chronically unemployed went back to work, family stability increased--all positive benefits. Why do I say that? Because we need to do the exact same thing for Medicaid.”

More here