The Medicaid Accordion

Raised in a Swedish household, I grew up with melodious tunes from our many family accordions. (And when I left Minnesota, I developed strange affections for;“Weird Al” Yankovic, Cajun zydeco, and Mexican Tejano music).;The physics of an accordion is interesting in that music is made by expanding and contracting the bellows—that expansion and contraction happening regularly.

As I was looking at the Medicaid enrollment figures, they reminded me a bit of an accordion—with swings in enrollment that health and human service executives track very closely. Enrollment expands and contracts based on both federal policy . . .