IFF Pooh-Poohs Number Crunchers

Yet again, the media are trying to convince Idahoans their purity of fact outshines that of those nefarious, dastardly, ideologically-driven legislators and folks like me who are refusing to accept another big government idea. A story from the Spokesman-Review newspaper, reprinted statewide by the Associated Press, claimed that Idaho taxpayers would save $390 million were the state to expand the Medicaid program as proposed by Obamacare. The savings claim is entirely bogus. The claim comes from a reporter’s “crunching of the numbers” from the local-state indigent care program. The reporter, in short, presumed certain things about the current program’s cost and the federal government’s promise to pick up nearly all the costs associated with the Medicaid expansion for the next several years. The story caused the usual editorial page writers to line up for the walk off the same cliff of self-righteousness/Wayne Hoffman, Idaho Freedom Foundation. More here

Question: So who can you believe here?