Bttt.
Depressing.
This summary is misleading.
If you go to the source material from The National Association of State Budget Officers, you see that while Medicaid accounts for 25.8% of the state spending, the state is only covering part of that expense. The second pie chart shows that 15.3% of a state’s own expenses are going toward Medicaid expenses. The rest is coming from the Federal government.
I found a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts entitled “State Health Care Spending on Medicaid.” I was curious because I see my Mom’s nursing home bills. She pays, from her own funds, more than $60,000/year for her nursing home stay. The Pew Study noted “Elderly and disabled individuals made up only 24% of enrollees in 2010, but they accounted for approximately 64% of payments.”
A further comment - Medicaid payments are made to the health care providers, they are not paid to the person receiving the service.
My husband and I have saved for retirement and should be able to pay for any required nursing home stays. How many of you can afford $5,000/month to stay in a nursing home? How many of you have relatives relying on Medicaid to pay for a nursing home? How many of you are planning on gaming the system and trying to figure out how to give your $100,000 savings plus your home to your children rather than using them to pay your nursing home bills? It’s easy to rationalize - “I worked all my life for this home and savings, and now some darned nursing home gets it. Let the state pay for my nursing home! After all, I’ve paid taxes all these years.” Whether you want to admit it or not, that’s dishonest.
It’s easy to decry the system until you realize that you may have to rely on it some day. Or a beloved elderly relative will.
And by so doing he got even your REPUBLICAN State Government to foot the bill for “keeping those (n-words) voting for Democrats forever.”
Gotta hand it to the man. He was fiendish, but brilliant.
Didn’t LBJ also “encourage” insurance companies to drop people so they would have no choice but to use his new program?