Examining Chris Runion, who wants to end Medicaid expansion

Chris Runion, candidate for the House of Delegates in Virginia’s 25th District, says that if elected, he wants to end Medicaid expansion in Virginia. He’s said that expansion threatens to “destroy the rest of the budget,” and that “it is robbing our money for education.” I check facts for a living, so I thought I’d check Mr. Runion’s.

Turns out he’s making a simple but costly error that, if he gets his way, would leave Virginia and its schools hundreds of millions of dollars poorer – and take health care away from roughly 1,500 of the people he’s running to represent.

Virginia has two kinds of Medicaid. The first was in place long before the Affordable Care Act, providing medical insurance to low-income, elderly, disabled, and special needs Virginians. This kind of Medicaid, whose costs Virginia splits roughly 50-50 with the federal government, does represent a growing portion of our budget – but not because of expansion. Instead, the rising costs come from elderly and disabled Medicaid recipients, who represent 25% of enrollees, but 67% of the program’s expenses.

Chris Runion seems to be confusing those costs with Medicaid expansion. Under the Affordable Care Act, Virginia has now expanded Medicaid eligibility for Virginians making up to $16,750 a year for individuals, or $28,676 for a family of three. (That latter figure represents less than two-thirds of the $45,600 Chris Runion made in 2018 just for being a board member at F&M Bank.) The federal government pays between 90% and 93% of expansion’s costs, and a group of Virginia hospitals cover the remainder every year, in hopes that expansion will help them recoup some of the charity costs they incur when treating uninsured people. Expansion doesn’t add a penny to any citizen’s Virginia state taxes.

Indeed, because it covers costs that Virginia would otherwise pay out of its own budget, Medicaid expansion has allowed Virginia to add more than $600 million to its education budget. (Our current delegate, Medicaid expansion opponent Steve Landes, neglected to mention this when he congratulated himself for passing the funding boost made possible by a program he voted against.)

Here in the 25th District, nearly 1,500 people had gained health care under expansion as of January 2019. More than 45% of them were parents or caretakers of another family member. More than 65% lived below the poverty line. Ending expansion would rob these people of health care – to achieve nothing. Virginia’s budget would lose money, not gain it, and we’d all pay the price.

I learned all this from Google searches and several simple phone calls and emails to relevant agencies. Why didn’t Chris Runion? He wants to make decisions that will affect hundreds of people in the district, and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars besides. If he can’t be bothered to do his homework first, maybe he shouldn’t bother running for office.

Article by Nathan Alderman. Alderman resides in Crozet.