[Vision2020] The Rush to Abandon the Poor

Art Deco art.deco.studios at gmail.com
Wed Jul 18 08:06:20 PDT 2012


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July 17, 2012
The Rush to Abandon the Poor

The state with the country’s worst health care record just happens to have
a governor who has been the loudest voice against national efforts to
improve it.

A quarter of the residents of Texas, 6.3 million people, are uninsured, by
far the highest
percentage<http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=125&cat=3&sub=39&yr=252&typ=2&o=a&sortc=6>in
the country. (That number includes more than a million children.)
Texas
ranks last in prenatal
care<http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=44&cat=2>
and
finished last<http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/texas-last-in-nation-on-health-care-report-2411062.html>on
a new federal assessment of overall health quality that examined
factors
like disease prevention, deaths from illnesses, and cancer treatment.

Yet Gov. Rick Perry — strangely puffed up as he was so often in his
presidential bid — recently told the Obama
administration<http://governor.state.tx.us/files/press-office/O-SebeliusKathleen201207090024.pdf>that
he would proudly refuse a huge infusion of Medicaid money that would
significantly reduce those shameful statistics and cover 1.7 million more
people. The same indifference to suffering that pushed Texas to the bottom
is now threatening to keep it there.

At least five other Republican governors have made a similar
choice<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/governors-face-hard-choices-over-medicaid-expansion.html>,
announcing that they will not expand their Medicaid program for the poor
even though the federal government would pay for almost all of it for
several years under President Obama’s health care reform law.

Their refusal illuminates a growing divide over the nature of a state
government’s role. Around the country, a new study
shows,<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/us/in-report-on-states-finances-a-grim-long-term-forecast.html?hp>states
continue to face a fiscal crisis because of rising costs and
Republican-driven cuts in federal aid.

While some governors and lawmakers are searching for new revenue sources,
others are using the downturn as an excuse to end a long tradition of
states being the final backstop for society’s neediest.

Over the last year, for example, eight
states<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-03/pennsylvania-joins-states-removing-safety-net-for-the-disabled.html>have
cut or eliminated cash welfare payments to their poorest residents. It
happened last week in Pennsylvania, where 61,000 residents — almost all of
whom are disabled and poor — were told that they would abruptly lose their
$200 monthly general assistance payments, all to save $150 million a year.
Our hands are tied by a tightening budget, welfare officials told
astonished recipients, though Gov. Tom Corbett’s hands didn’t seem
restrained when he handed out $300 million in business tax
cuts<http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-03/news/32509089_1_corbett-signs-school-vouchers-state-budget>earlier
this month.

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio has cut hundreds of millions from education, but
when the state found itself with a $235 million surplus a few weeks ago, he
announced that it would all
go<http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/07/04/surplus-goes-from-89-cents-to-482-million.html>into
a rainy-day fund, doing nothing to deal with rising
classroom sizes<http://www.policymattersohio.org/state-budget-ohio-schools-jan2012>.
In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage — who compared the health care reform law to the
Holocaust<http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/lepage-maine-irs-gestapo.php>—
signed a budget bill in May that will reduce or eliminate existing
Medicaid coverage for 21,000
people<http://bangordailynews.com/2012/07/11/politics/health-ruling-interpretation-puts-feds-at-odds-with-lepages-planned-mainecare-cuts/>.


Mr. Perry, too, opposes the existing Medicaid program, and, in a recent
letter to Washington, said that expanding it represented “brazen intrusions
into the sovereignty of our state” and would “threaten even Texas with
financial ruin.” The truth is that Washington will pay all the cost of the
expansion for three years (then scale back to 90 percent). Mr. Perry’s bold
resistance may play well politically in his state, but it’s nothing more
than a stomach punch to the millions of uninsured in Texas who will have to
stay that way.

Many mainstream Republican governors are taking a different approach.
In a letter
to the president <http://rgppc.com/medicaid-and-exchange-letter-2/> last
week, Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, the chairman of the Republican
Governors Association, said states should think carefully before they
reject Washington’s money. Though he remained quite critical of health
reform and Medicaid, he also noted that refusing the expansion would create
“a significant gap in coverage” for low-income people.

For now, at least, Virginia recognizes an obligation to its weakest
citizens. It’s time for Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa and
Louisiana to do the same.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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