Posted on 02/21/2005 7:31:51 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - For many of America's cash-strapped governors meeting in Washington this week, the Social Security debate represents an unwelcome distraction from what they see as a far more pressing crisis: how states are to pay for Medicaid, the health safety net for the nation's poor and disabled.
"Even in the worst-case scenario, Social Security isn't going to go broke until 2042," said Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat and chairman of the National Governors Association, who is among a group of governors in talks with the Bush administration and Congress over how to reshape Medicaid and get a grip on spending.
"Medicaid is going to go broke long before that. At its current rate, it will break the bank for states in the next 10 years."
Started 40 years ago for welfare recipients, Medicaid has expanded so broadly that it now covers as many as 54 million Americans, slightly more than the number drawing on Social Security. And in the face of spiraling health-care costs and shrinking resources from Washington, states are finding it harder to pay what the federal government won't cover.
Annual costs to states and the federal government have swelled from about $225 billion in 2001 to a projected $324 billion this year. They are expected to continue at a pace that far exceeds growth in state revenue. States on average are now spending more each year on Medicaid than on K-12 schools.
--snip--
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Nikita may be right.
"We will bury you."
what is amazing is - they ever propose a single dollar in cuts to the program. people who work in the private sector, their health benefits are being cut every year, their co-pays are going up every year.
Welcome to the beauty of socialism run amuck. It always self-destructs. If the program(s) had been kept under control and properly managed, they could have been viable, as would have the integrity of the state. But this is too much to ask of the liberal criminals that have destroyed California's financial structure.
As a life-long resident I have watched California's greatness dwindle in the late 70s. Since then, straight down the liberal crapper.
its not just California - almost every state has this problem.
There should be a funding crisis. In this state the developmentally disabled, or psychatricly disabled especially under the age of 18 are not required to take drugs to control their out of control behaviors. Instead they are assigned their own worker or two or even three, 24 hours a day to hold them down when they are out of control. These mentally and psychiatricly ill people can scream kick and hurt others and can only be held down or placed in padded rooms. the 24 hour care is picked up by the taxpayer. This is PC care today, on your tax dollars. And guess what? HIPPA has made it so we cant even exam and evaluate this kind of tax payer rape. Thank the next lawyer you meet.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Farmer Hans Mobius says his property taxes are so high that he thinks about selling off chunks of his 100-acre horse farm or shutting down altogether.
The Clarence farmer traces the problem back to New York's Medicaid program, which consumes most of the tax dollars he pays.
On Thursday, Mobius added his voice _ and that of the other 36,000 members of the New York Farm Bureau _ to cries for reform of the state-federal health insurance program for the poor.
"The farmers are hurting and we need this relief," said Mobius, who joined business and county leaders from around New York at the first of several rallies planned in the coming weeks.
"Medicaid is killing us," said Erie County Executive Joel Giambra, surrounded by executives from Chautauqua, Niagara, Onondaga, Oneida and Westchester counties.
Though not new, calls to rein in Medicaid spending have been gathering steam at all levels of government.
President Bush has proposed forcing states to correct mismanagement on their end of the program as a way to lessen financial pressure on the federal government.
Gov. George Pataki, meanwhile, is promoting a plan to cap county Medicaid costs at 2005 levels with future increases eventually being reduced to 3 percent a year.
Those gathered Thursday called the cap proposal encouraging, but they are lobbying for a hard cap, without room for future increases.
New York's is the most expensive Medicaid program in the nation, coalition members said, with costs exceeding those of Texas and California combined.
Counties pay about 19 percent of overall costs in New York, with the state paying 31 percent and the federal government 50 percent.
State Comptroller Alan Hevesi last month projected that county property taxes would increase by nearly one-third by the end of this decade if the cost of the Medicaid program isn't checked.
For farmers like Mobius, the prospect is unsettling. Citing Cornell University statistics, Mobius said that from 1992 to 2002, the typical dairy farmer's property tax increased from 12 percent to 35 percent of his income.
"The typical dairy farmer saw an extra $5,200 of family income go to pay property taxes, much of it for medical services his own family couldn't afford," he said.
Jay Gsell, county manager in farm-rich Genesee County, said money could be saved without decimating the medical programs by adding a copay and changing the way prescription drugs are disbursed and cases are managed.
The coalition made a second stop Thursday in Chemung County.
Nursing homes are a kind of payola for docs. People like foot docs and psychiatrists can breeze through and bill everybody. It is more lucrative than actually treating patients.
I once had the great misfortune of being married to my ex-wife. She was a bureaucrat involved in a Midwestern state's health bureaucracy. I'll never forget the day she came home to celebrate the brainstorm that hit her department. Through a complicated process nursing home facilities were able to contribute to the state -through a funding mechanism that effectively boosted the federal matching grant. To hear her tell of it - free money was falling from the sky - after all - they were federal dollars. When I pointed out the fact that Wisconsin paid in about $1.84 on average for every $1.00 returned by the federal government - so that finding a federal dollar was no bargain, the point was lost on her. For some reason, in her view - state taxpayers were not federal taxpayers. This was the mentality of the typical state bureaucrat running the Medicare and Medicaid programs. This is why there will never be reform from within. If Bush has true chutzpah - he'll fix this too.
what they see as a far more pressing crisis: how states are to pay for Medicaid, the health safety net for the nation's poor and disabled.
Hint to the States: Deport all illegal aliens and your Medicaid crisis will be over.
like me.....paying over $600 a month for two people on insurance and 3 on dental....geesh.....
of course , this is not a problem for the govt workers, so therefore, nothing will be done.....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.