Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison on CHIP "forfeiture"
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my Texas ping list!. . .don't be shy.
No, you don't HAVE to be a Texan to get on this list!
Posted on 01/24/2005 8:31:16 PM PST by hocndoc
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 19, 2005 CONTACT: Kevin Schweers
SENATOR HUTCHISON LAMENTS LOST HEALTH CARE FUNDING Texas Forfeited $104 Million in Additional CHIP Funding, HHS Says
WASHINGTON, DC -- In a setback for Texas taxpayers, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today announced that the State of Texas forfeited $104 million in Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding for fiscal year 2002, raising the total lost by the state since 2000 to more than $700 million.
“The health care system in Texas, and particularly our county hospital network, is under enormous pressure because of the large number of uninsured patients that require treatment. As a result, our property tax payers are bearing a heavy burden,” said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services. “I regret that another significant allotment of Texas taxpayer dollars, that could have helped local governments pay for their health care bills, has again been voluntarily forfeited. As a simple matter of fiscal conservatism, this does not make sense.”
In 2005, for every dollar the state puts into CHIP, the federal government will provide $2.65 in matching funds. (This program is particularly beneficial to state health systems, because the match is greater than Medicaid. For every state Medicaid dollar, the federal government supplies $1.56.) States have three years to take advantage of CHIP dollars before they are redistributed to other states. Today, HHS said that the states of Arizona, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey and Rhode Island, would be the primary beneficiaries of this redistribution, having spent their own allocation. More information about the program can be found at www.cms.hhs.gov/schip.
Wouldn't they have come from the businesses, property owners, and shoppers of the State of Texas?
Currently, one of the ways that is being considered to raise money for Medicaid and CHIP is a business tax on doctors, so that the doctors can be paid more, so more will join in Medicaid and CHIP, so more can be taxed.....
Doctors have no way to pass the costs of doing business on to the patients, partly because of unwise laws such as CHIP and those allowing HMO's and Medicare regulations. We have been forced to spend money on "the Privacy Act" and electronic filing (and now electronic medical records) and I was unwilling to borrow money to afford all this 2 years ago.
I don't understand the logic of sending the money to Washington, in the first place.
I'm running a fever (the cedar pollen got me) and I will defer my letter to the Senator until tomorrow (even though I've yet to get a letter back that looks as though anyone read mine, when I do get a response. Usually it's completely off topic. Or sent to my office to "Mrs." or no response at all - even when I met with her staff at her office and followed up with a letter, no one responded.)
Guess they forfeited border security too, somewhere along the line. Say, about that now-unallocated $104 million, I got an idea.
The Senator (or Kevin, her staffer) points out that other States have already split up what we "wasted" because we wouldn't raise State taxes in Texas.
I'd say it's time for the good Senator to demand that the Feds live up to their end of the contract. You know, the one that says the Feds are responsible for protecting the borders, and keeping out the unauthorized aliens who are draining Texas' health resources in the first place.
I understand that not all of you will agree with me on this issue, but could y'all ping your lists? I would like to see the Freeper minds turned on this raise taxes so we can spend money to get our money back from Washington scheme.
The Senator must know that 60% of the uninsured in Texas have family incomes over $75,000 a year. That many of those you run into in the ER have employer insurance available, but don't want to "waste" their money on monthly insurance payments (had it round and round with one of my kids over this issue).
Ping
That's strange. Senator Hutchison has always been good about responding to my letters - better than Cornyn or Perry or most other congressmen.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison on CHIP "forfeiture"
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my Texas ping list!. . .don't be shy.
No, you don't HAVE to be a Texan to get on this list!
I know someone who was actually toying with the idea of divorcing her husband so her child would qualify for the CHIP program. Fortunately good sense reigned, but still.
sundero
Same here. She gets things done for me.
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