Discussion: Senate Bill Opens Door For States To Use Medicaid Funds On Roads, Bridges, Stadiums

1 Like

“Left over???” If you neglect and abandon your poor and elderly, you might get a bridge!

17 Likes

Don’t worry, even if they strike it here it will show back up later in the conference committee due to ‘an unknown aide’

7 Likes

How does somebody writing a specific exception to allow diverting the money to non-Medicaid purposes qualify as an “inadvertent error”? Seems like somebody intended to allow it.

18 Likes

An "inadvertent error” = “We were hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

11 Likes

Can you say “pork” and “sweetheart deals”?

3 Likes

This is why the Feds need to manage Medicaid and everything else. There would be certain governors who would, under pressure from some of their wealthy patrons, divert the funds to other uses other than Medicaid. This is why these Republicans did it. It’s always got to do with giving money to the wealthy.

9 Likes

Hey Bubba! Why would you want to go to the Dr. for that cough when we can go watch the fun at the new NASCAR track!

3 Likes

This is Donniebrook’s vaunted infrastructure plan.
I wish I could say I’m surprised by the venality, greed, disregard for life and the common good of these ‘public servants’.

4 Likes

What in the fucking hell is wrong with these folks, unfucking believeable, yet sadly not.

3 Likes

Man, this legislative sausage is going bad by the minute.

5 Likes

Hey! They can soften the grieving process by offering to name (chosen by a lottery) a bridge rivet, a stretch of road, a repaired pothole, et cetera, for persons who died so that the infrastructure may continue!! After the TrumpRegime privatize all things ‘privatizable’, of course.

2 Likes

There is NOTHING in that bill "inadvertently "…NOTHING that Mitch McConnell didn’t craft himself or approve of

6 Likes

I could totally see Gov Brownback game the system, gut medicaid and use the “left over” money not for infrastructure programs, but for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Kansas. Ya, this wouldn’t lead to some perverse incentives in terms of witholding care from the neediest.

1 Like

When I talked to younger voters last fall, this is what they predicted would happen if both houses of Congress and the White House were GOP controlled - i.e. the differences between the red and blue states would become more and more pronounced. Many didn’t seem to think that was such a terrible outcome. What was dismaying to me was that 1) they ignored the fact that not everyone could move to a state that was more in line with their societal philosophy and 2) they weren’t bothered by the idea that we wouldn’t really be a country anymore.

4 Likes

Yea, right! That is really going to help people get well and stay healthy.

And by the way, why should access to health care for someone living in one state be different from that available to someone living n another state? Last time I checked, health, sickness, injuries, dying, and death recognize no state borders.

2 Likes

Better care, my ass! Stadiums??? Are you shitting me? Damn near all taxpayers forced into covering for those ginormous projects lose out to money already diverted from taxpayers to pay for things the team owners should be covering. Billionaires once again getting off the hook, even more so than they already are, makes me even more disgusted. While Congress can’t pass a transportation bill to give the States money for the roads in this country at the federal level, the states will be once more dipping into their own dedicated state revenues to fix the roads from Medicaid? As if they’ll be any money left over…that’s a laugh too…but when there’s a Republican-led majority involved, there’ll always find a way. Michigan’s GOP will like that, since they can’t get anything meaningful done on road repair here in years on their own. That added pile of cash to shift and skim off the top will be a great way for them to destroy Medicaid even further at the state level.

That per capita inflation basis is another doozy. A real tell. They didn’t want to tie it to inflation of medical costs which would have made far more sense. But who’s talking sense here?

Doesn’t Medicaid have rules that have been codified into the original Medicaid law about dedicated funding paying for things completely related to Medicaid? Maybe I’m misunderstanding how this is even legal.

2 Likes

Man, this legislative sausage is going bad by the minute.

1 Like

eeeeewwwwww. I’m about to eat lunch too.

1 Like

“Leftover Medicaid money”. That’s a good one. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I wanna sell ya. Oh wait . . .

Is ALEC still alive ? it’s hard to tell because State Republican legislators always work in secret. Very soon they will create laws to funnel this $ wherever they want it to go. What they did to public education will be very similar to what they will do to every form of care in the medical industry, make it UN-affordable. They’ll change the words this time because they got caught but the new wording will produce exactly the same result.

5 Likes