As we see President Obama currently campaigning across America and telling citizens that Republicans are out to hurt the poor, pollute the air and push Granny off the cliff, we see that the President’s administration is approving cuts to State medicaid healthcare programs, some of the them seeing as much as a 10% total reduction in funding. With medicaid costs soaring, many state budgets are on the verge of insolvency. Driven by higher enrollment and medical costs, Medicaid spending was projected to rise an average of 11.2% in fiscal 2011, which ended in June, from $427 billion in 2010, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. We were promised that healthcare costs would go down for everyone if Obama-care was passed into law, yet it is proving to do just the opposite.
For fiscal year 2012, the association estimated state Medicaid spending will rise 19%, largely because of the end of the federal stimulus dollars.
Medicaid enrollment has exploded in large part due to the mandates in Obama-care that has made healthcare insurance so expensive that companies could no longer afford to offer it to their workers. While the stimulus package was touted as a way to spur the economy through such things as “shovel-ready-jobs” a huge part of it was spent to shore up over-burdened State Medicaid budgets caused by, you guessed it, the passing of Obama-care. If this was not the case, then why has the Obama administration had to hand out over 1300 Obama-care waivers, which temporarily allows health insurers to offer low cost plans,( which is outlawed in Obama-care) as of May, 2011?
Using federal stimulus dollars to prop up exploding medicaid costs due to Obama-care forcing millions of more people to be put on Medicaid rolls was just another gimmick to try to cover up the truth about the Liberal Democrats so-called health-care reform. As the stimulus dollars dried up, states are forced to make steep cuts to their Medicaid programs. This will hurt folks who had health care insurance from work before the passage of Obama-care, but are now on medicaid, plus the poorest of the poor. Where is the outrage?
Check this out for just one example of what is being done to the poor people on medicaid today: More States limiting Medicaid hospital stays. What stands out the most in that article is the fact that many States have already received federal approval to cut Medicaid budgets, yet those facts have largely been hidden from us. Arizona, which last year stopped covering certain transplants for several months, plans to limit adult Medicaid recipients to 25 days of hospital coverage a year, starting as soon as the end of October.
Hawaii plans to cut Medicaid coverage to 10 days a year in April, the fewest of any state.
Both efforts require federal approval, which state officials consider likely because several other states already restrict hospital coverage.
Many states will simply refuse to discharge a patient who needs to stay the full time in the hospital, and say they will just eat the extra costs, but how long will they be able to keep their doors open under that scenario? Where is the outrage about [Democrat] Governor Jerry Brown cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from Medi-Cal, with the Obama administration’s approval? Where is the outrage ?
Los Angeles Times: California Gets OK For Large Cuts To Medi-Cal
The Obama administration will allow California to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Medi-Cal, a move doctors and experts say will make it harder for the poor to get medical treatment. California plans to reduce rates by 10 percent to many providers, including physicians, dentists, clinics, pharmacies and most nursing homes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Thursday (Gorman, 10/28) Where is the outrage on how Obama and the far left Liberals in California want the poorest of the poor in California to go without medical care?
North Carolina is facing the same dilemma of medicaid budget cuts as California:
Associated Press/Houston Chronicle: Different Takes On NC Medicaid Shortfall Argued
Republican budget-writers and Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue’s administration quarreled Thursday over why North Carolina’s Medicaid program could face a $139 million shortfall this coming year. State health regulators told the Legislature’s chief oversight committee they’re falling short of meeting $356 million in net reductions for the division that oversees Medicaid, the government-run health care plan for poor children, older adults and the disabled. They said the savings are difficult, if not impossible to come by this year in part due to slow enrollment of the chronically ill in the state’s managed-care arm (Robertson, 10/27).
What has exasperated this problem is the fact that in the 2010 elections, Republicans were elected into governments across America and are now facing actual truth in numbers about their State budgets, many of which are mandated by law to be balanced annually. State budget battles are exposing the exploding medicaid cost-burdens being forced onto state budgets due to Obama-care mandates, and the attempt to hide these costs through federal tax dollars being funneled to state medicaid programs through the stimulus package.
With Republicans holding a majority in the House of Representatives today, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid no longer have carte blanche to use federal tax dollars to hide the disastrous effects Obama-care is having on State budgets across America. This idea that “everyone gets free healthcare” with the passing of Obama-care is now proving to be nothing more than a Liberal fairy tale heavily rooted in the denial of the reality that comes with Obama-care. When Barack Obama says he will insure an extra 35 million Americans through Obama-care, he conveniently refuses to tell the people just who he will steal from in order to pay for it. He started the whole thing off by taking $500 billion dollars from Senior’s Medicare to pay for Obama-care, and he is counting on Seniors to be naive enough to believe it was somehow Republicans who were pushing Granny off a cliff, and thus con them into voting for four more years of Barack Obama’s thievery from one class of citizens to another. 2012 just can’t get here fast enough!
