Governor Kaine’s proposed budget cuts have stirred predictable gasps among cigarette diehards. Meanwhile, a proposed Medicaid freeze gains only passing mention. The freeze is described obliquely as:
$418 million, chiefly to Medicaid; freezes or reduces reimbursement rates to Medicaid care providers; delays planned new services; limits eligibility for new enrollments, but does not affect current beneficiaries.
Limits eligibility for new enrollments?
How? By outlawing old age? How will we legislate away catastrophic events like strokes, cancer, and heart attacks, chronic illness, mental illness and disability? By freezing nursing facility and hospital admissions? By stiffing health care providers for needed services? By banning poverty?
Virginia’s hard-hearted Medicaid program already ranks 47th out of the 50 states in enrollees as a percent of total population, and Virginia remains at 48th among states in Medicaid spending per capita.
Governor Kaine, we voted for you over Jerry Kilgore because we wanted a competent and compassionate governor. Republicans like Kilgore love to “keep government small” by pretending the poor and the sick don’t exist, or trying to wish away their hospital bills.
This is the ultimate “penny-wise, pound foolish” budget cut. Indigent medical and mental health needs don’t go away just because we’re not paying for them. They get worse, causing more havoc in our emergency rooms, jails, and nursing facilities.
What’s a little uncontrolled TB worth? Who cares if your busboy has a cough? A few acutely paranoid schizophrenics who can’t afford treatment and start obeying the voices? We’ll wish them away and hope no one gets hurt. Your indigent aunt with dementia? Quit your day job, get your guest room ready and lock up the matches.
We’re sorry that smokers are upset with the proposed tax increase, but so what? Cutting Medicaid eligibility is not cutting government waste or fat. It’s amputating a limb and then telling the patient to keep running.
Filed under: Local, Medicaid | Tagged: Hampton Roads, Medicaid
[...] Again we ask, how exactly is that going to work? Will patients who would otherwise go to nursing facilities remain at the hospital at a much higher cost? Will they be sent home without the medical care and rehabilitation they need? Will the mentally impaired wind up wandering the streets? Will they get tossed in jail on trumped-up charges? (Oh, wait that’s already happening). [...]
[...] for you, Dr. Northam. Governor Kaine’s proposed Medicaid cuts will be disastrous for Virginia’s most vulnerable citizens: the elderly, the disabled, the ill, the poor. They will cause layoffs and cutbacks in services at [...]