Another example of the Republican war on the poor and disabled.
“I sorry, the state has budgeted for 500 power wheelchairs this year. You are 510 on the list. If someone dies you will move up the list. We will let you know.”
4 Likes
I’m pretty sure that Medicaid is the funding source of last resort for the elderly needing nursing home care in most/all states. There are rules: you have to be mostly destitute to qualify. So an industry has arisen to help wealthy granny hide her assets from state officials so the family can park her in a nursing home courtesy of tax payers. I hear ads for elder care lawyers all the time (and mostly on right wing talk stations)!!! Good luck massaging this one, GOP.
5 Likes
While certain programs may well work better when federal money is block-granted to states, a person’s health isn’t one of them. First, why have 50 states doing 50 different things, One argument is that ideas come from that approach and other states can adopt them. Fact is, states already have wide-ranging latitude on the application of Medicaid … i.e., who qualifies, etc. Also, as it relates to my health - I am an American citizen … and that should be portable across all states, not specific to the one I am currently living in. Finally - every state in America has representatives in Washington. A uniform and mandatory way makes sense. That’s why we have a federal governance.
7 Likes
Good question. For shits and giggles I did quick search and couldn’t find anything beyond what states pay on average per enrollee. That doesn’t tell you much. Plus, with some states accepting the Medicaid expansion and others refusing, it’s probably pretty tough to make a side by side comparison.
That being said, in just about every healthiest/least healthy article you can find, red states are always the least health. And then we know that the states with older populations tend to be red states. Older, sicker, poorer, and less educated is pretty much a recipe for Medicaid.
7 Likes
And the epicenter of the Drumpfian demographic…
5 Likes
The single biggest expense for Medicaid is elderly people in nursing homes.
This plan would put most of them out in the streets to die alone.
6 Likes
Saying they are trying to create incentives for states to cut costs is like saying you want a family of 8 to stretch their $10 food budget to 2 weeks instead of one. Just ask the hospitals in Arizona that could not get paid beyond 22 days of hospitalization per year even if the Medicaid recipient had catastrophic illness and was in the hospital literally for months.
4 Likes
1 Like
The context for this is the fact that 5% of Americans use 50% of healthcare resources. 1% use 20%. Decisions made at the margins of eligibility have a huge impact on costs.
1 Like
I vividly remember tremendous applause at a Republican debate (in a previous election cycle) when someone said people who can’t afford insurance should be allowed to die - might have been Ron Paul, not sure at this point.
Most of the Republicans I know believe that people who do not have insurance have done something to get that way. Since they have a job and are insured they assume anyone who doesn’t is too lazy (or worse - maybe criminal) to “put in the hard work” that they perceive themselves as having done. Until it happens to them they seem to lack the ability to imagine it - just like they can’t imagine someone they love dearly wanting to marry a same sex partner or get an abortion after being raped - until it happens to them. Then, like Dick Cheney, they are all about gay rights.
There is a lot of science coming out about basic differences in how conservatives and liberals think and it is both fascinating and demoralizing. Bottom line - as long as the majority of conservatives have health insurance they won’t see a problem.
Conservatives are people who haven’t lost their insurance yet - even if it is Medicaid, Medicare, VA or amazingly, the ACA.
4 Likes
The GOP has been reading ‘How to start a pandemic in one easy move’ again.
2 Likes
Please stop calling it Obamacare. It is the Affordable Care Act, or ACA.
1 Like
Why? The GOP named it Obamacare and it came back to haunt them. Even President Obama ultimately liked it. He said, “Yes, it’s true. Obama Cares.”
If the rubes don’t have enough sense to know they are the same thing it is because they are willfully ignorant.
4 Likes
I was thinking the same thing, Darcy.
They never stop. The lizard brain always shows itself with them.
1 Like
Pretty much exactly what Reagan did to the mentally ill.
1 Like
One thing we know for sure is, it isn’t about better health care or being all inclusive.
If the Repubs can manage to make a big change in the system, it will only be step one of the ultimate goal which is to get rid of all entitlements and government backed programs.
If better healthcare was the true goal, they would’ve implemented plans decades ago and would just work to improve the ACA now or move to universal healthcare and be done with it.
The VA works, Medicaid works, SCHIP works and these are just smaller iterations of universal coverage that could all be wrapped into one thereby reducing overhead and waste and simplifying it all into one more efficient and manageable system with almost no uncertainties.
If the goal were truly this, healthcare for all, then the answer is simple. The difficulties are only about the not conservatives making it some Ann Randian thing and their unwillingness to get their snouts out of the trough and do the unthinkable, actually agree on something.
The technical term for you friends is dumb fucks.
Thanks for the analysis, TPM.
1 Like
The current huge reaction about this temporary hold on immigration is the shiny object of the moment. Meanwhile tectonic shifts are occurring without any attention from activists
Exactly. This is Bannon’s strategy: keep us running in circles, shrieking about the latest EO. What’s needed is less reaction and more focus. Focus and strategic action are our friends. Despair, distress, and reactive panic are our enemies.
You left out and give more tax breaks to their donors and corporations. Just another way for donor states to subsidize the mismanagement and bizarre fiscal policies of the recipient states.
1 Like