Thursday, April 28, 2005
Medicaid Reform: Protecting the People
Governor Mike Huckabee is leading a national effort among governors to steer Medicaid reform. Working alongside Democratic Governor Mark Warner of Virginia, Huckabee is keeping the people--grandmothers, grandfathers, the poor and disabled--who depend upon Medicaid for their very survival at the forefront of the debate.
"The real focus we have is not how can we cut people off, it's how can we provide services to people who really need it, and how to maintain them at an affordable level," Huckabee said.
That plan was jeopardized last week when a planning document, intended only for governors, was leaked to Congress. The unfinished document contained references to proposed Medicaid cost savings, not cuts, in the neighborhood of $8 to $9 billion. This number was seized upon by House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, who argued incorrectly on Tuesday that the nation's governors have come together to support reducing Medicaid spending, so House members should, too.
Now Governors Huckabee and Warner are leading a battle to ensure the people who desperately need Medicaid services are protected.
"They've done exactly what we feared they might. They're looking at a budget number. We're looking at people,'' Huckabee said.
Medicaid has grown far faster than inflation and is estimated to cost over $300 billion in total this year. Future projections put expenditures at astronomical levels, threatening to bankrupt the program.
Today roughly 53 million people are on Medicaid. The program now pays for two of every three nursing home patients in the country. It pays for one out of three births. It has become the leading payer of mental health services, and the leading payer of services for people with HIV and AIDS. One out of nine people in the country are on Medicaid.
"One thing governors feel, Democrats and Republicans alike, is that we have a health care system that, if you're on Medicaid, you have unlimited access to health care, at unlimited levels, at no cost. No wonder it's running away," Huckabee has said. "But people need to remember that to balance the federal budget off the backs of the poorest people in the country is simply unacceptable. You don't pull feeding tubes from people. You don't pull the wheelchair out from under the child with muscular dystrophy."
BSR
