Pew's Stateline on Mental Health Funding and Medicaid Expansion

See this interesting article, which begins:

The recent mass killings in Tucson, Aurora and Newtown have sparked public conversations about the deficiencies in state-run mental health systems across the United States. But few states are poised to spend their own money to reverse as much as a decade of budget cutbacks in those areas. 

Instead, many of them are counting on an infusion of federal mental-health dollars. Because Medicaid includes mental-health benefits, those states that opt into the Medicaid expansion included in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act will be able to make mental health coverage available to thousands of their citizens who do not now have it. 

For the first three years that additional coverage would cost the states nothing: Under terms of the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will cover 100 percent of the costs of new Medicaid enrollees for the first three years and 90 percent after 2020.

So far, 20 governors, some of them Republicans who opposed the health care law, have committed their states to the Medicaid expansion. Ten Republican governors have announced they will not participate. If all states opted into the expansion, an estimated 13 million more Americans would receive mental health benefits through Medicaid next year, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office. The number would rise to 17 million in 2022.