States Sue Over Overhaul That Will Bust State Budgets

I guess this is an additional cost not in the CBO numbers. What else is in the bill?

Excerpt: Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania are among 14 states that filed suit after the president signed the bill over the constitutionality of the burden imposed by the legislation. The health-care overhaul will make as many as 15 million more Americans eligible for Medicaid nationwide starting in 2014 and will cost the states billions to administer.

Florida will have to spend an additional $1.6 billion for Medicaid and hire 1,000 new workers to accommodate the overhaul, the state’s Attorney General Bill McCollum said yesterday in Orlando, Florida.

“This is a bad bill,” he said. “That’s a political determination and a practical one.”

The states that sued are Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington, McCollum said in a statement on his office’s Web site.

The complaint posted on the Florida attorney general’s Web site called the legislation an “encroachment on the sovereignty of states,” and said Florida will be asked to “broaden its Medicaid eligibility standards to accommodate upwards of 50 percent more enrollees.”

Read Bloomberg article here.