Monday, May 09, 2005
NCSL President: "Medicaid was never intended to be a middle-class entitlement program for nursing home care"
[Robert Pear, "States Propose Sweeping Changes to Trim Medicaid by Billions," The New York Times, 9 May 2005.]
Governors and state legislators from around the country are working together to develop a significant reform package in an effort to save the broken Medicaid program - and their budgets:
The proposals, drafted by separate working groups of governors and state legislators, provide guidance to Congress, which 10 days ago endorsed a budget blueprint that would cut projected Medicaid spending by $10 billion over the next five years.
John Adams Hurson, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates who is president of the National Conference of State Legislatures, said: "I am a Democrat, a liberal Democrat, but we can't sustain the current Medicaid program. It's fiscal madness. It doesn't guarantee good care, and it's a budget buster. We need to instill a greater sense of personal responsibility so people understand that this care is not free."
State officials say their goal is not just to save money, but also to avoid wholesale cuts in coverage like those in Tennessee, which is dropping more than 300,000 people from its Medicaid rolls, and in Missouri, which is dropping 90,000.
Medicaid, the nation's largest health insurance program, covers more than 50 million low-income people. Though originally intended for the poor, it now covers people with incomes well above the poverty level in some states.
Mr. Hurson, the president of the conference of state legislatures, who is also chairman of the health committee in the Maryland House, said, "Medicaid was never intended to be a middle-class entitlement program for nursing home care."
[Matthew Hisrich, "A Backgrounder on Kansas Medicaid," The Flint Hills Center, 19 July 2004.]
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