Something a certain person said last year after they ended their presidential run has really stuck with me, as I also believe a government has a responsibility to its people.
We live in a Robin Hood world. I don’t find what you call Robin Hood objectionable … the question is how much Robin Hood.”
— Howard Dean, speaking in Rockland County about school aid reform (Albany Times Union, 12/3/04)
From what I understand, the federal government is turning the financing of Medicaid over to the states. This is in addition to the huge amount each state must send in to the Federal government for the new Medicare bill which starts in 2006.
Perhaps we should remember this is happening in part because of the tax cuts and tax shelters for the wealthiest among us. These are only 3 states in my diary, there are others in which it is occurring right now: Pennsylvania, Texas, Mississippi. Still others.
A New and Heavy Burden: Missouri and Medicaid
A New and Heavy Burden
“Tim…has neuroblastoma, a cancer that strikes young cells that were destined to become part of the body’s nervous system. Tammy’s health insurance from her cashier’s job at Moser’s Discount Foods in Columbia covers only part of the treatment. The family’s Medicaid benefits cover most of the remaining costs, which sometimes total $5,500 a month. But those benefits could soon end.
The Missouri legislature, responding to a proposal by Gov. Matt Blunt, is cutting 90,000 Missourians from Medicaid rolls and reducing benefits for many more. Tim and his family might or might not be among them. They’ve found getting a straight answer is not always easy.
TennCare: A Ripple Effect (and a human face on it)
“For two years, Brenda Derryberry, 61, has been glad to pay TennCare $600 a month for health insurance, including co-pays for medicine.”
“She has a serious heart condition, diabetes and a bad back, among other ailments, and she takes 21 different prescription drugs a day. The medicine alone would cost her $1,000 a month without insurance.
She is among 67,000 ”uninsurable adults” on the TennCare rolls, at least for now. The state said it is cutting those folks to help rein in the program’s staggering costs of $8.7 billion a year. Unless Derryberry can qualify as a ”medically needy” enrollee, she appears certain to lose her insurance. And the ”medically needy” category is no sure thing. A federal court will ultimately decide the TennCare fate of those 97,000 adults.”
And of course in Jeb’s Florida, another heartless cut.
Mentally ill face Medicaid cuts, AHCA limits drugs prescribed
Taking the Mentally ill off their prescriptions
“Zoloft, Paxil, Zyprexa.
These pills commonly taken for depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and bipolar disease did not make the recommended list of prescription drugs available to the 2.2 million Floridians on Medicaid.
Because of legislation passed this spring, Medicaid patients with mental illnesses for the first time are subject to limits on which medications they can be prescribed.”
That same former candidate also said:
The Republicans are the reverse Robin Hood party — steal from the poor and give to the rich —
And that is happening right now.
And this administration intends for it to get much worse. Not doubt it will if they continue unchecked for the forseeable future.
We are going to look like Calcuta did years ago, with beggers and dying people in the streets hoping for something from someone.
Makes me sick to my stomach what they are doing to our country.
This administration has been the keys to the jail for the wealthy. They have opened the gates and turned them loose. Robber barons, corporations now have a pretty free hand at shaping policy, and not in favor of the working person.
Both sides of the isles have been infulenced by money for so long, you could’nt shoot amongst them and not hit a viable target.
It’s not going to be a simple task, but WE THE PEOPLE need to take control of OUR destiny ; )
I know medical shcool is costly, and takes many years out of a persons life to follow the medical field, but holy shit, do they need 2-4 Mercedes in the driveway, 3 condo’s in different climates, 3 ex’s they support, and their lifestyle, etc, etc ????
I know that R&D takes years, and a lot of money to perfect working drugs, but c’mon now, how many billions in profit do these corps need?
Money is the strangle hold on our country, and greed is the agressor, this is the evil that needs to be held responsible.
The whole Megadrug Industry is just beyond the pale. Their latest, or at least most glaring is the habit of taking the same old drugs that have patents about to expire and “remanufacturing” them with some slight alteration to ingredients (usually a filler of a slight difference)so that they will NOT become available as generic drugs and they can charge new, higher prices. What little tv I manage to catch is proliferated with ads from Merck right now about what a humanitarian company they are and how it only is in business because it wants to save people’s lives and health. WTF? And I suppose there are millions of the tv hypnotized that are believing this crap!
Going to check my blood pressure now. . .
We are going to look like Calcuta did years ago, with beggers and dying people in the streets hoping for something from someone.
As someone who’s worked with the homeless in Canada and who has followed poverty issues for a a long time, I hate to say it but your country already looks like that. Just spend some time talking to the homeless who are ill and you’ll find a huge group of throwaway people who will die on the streets without treatment.
No one should suffer or die due to an inability to pay for health care – no one – anywhere.
I do talk to them and I do see them sick and dying. . .I was just meaning that it is going to become much, much worse. I had an acquaintance that got so heavily into drugs that he not only was living on the streets but he fell or was pushed down a stairwell and died at age 42 from the resultant skull fracture.
Even small town Idaho has waaay too many homeless and ill people living on its streets and byways. And one person thus described is too many in my estimation.
We don’t put drug offenders into treatment any more, if we ever did, here in Idaho. They do jail time and then are thrown out on the streets. How we ever got to the point of feeling that people are “throw aways” I will never know.
Canada is a much more civilized and caring nation than we are, and maybe you good folks always have been. There is some darn selfish attitude that seems to prevail in the general populace of the USA that it is all about getting and keeping “yours.” And if other folks worked as hard as you do they wouldn’t need anyone’s help. Don’t understand it and I never have or ever will. Obviously, I don’t belong in this country because I sure don’t seem to make much headway with that thought process others hold that it is all about them.
And of the caring, giving persons that do live in this country, I am amazed that it is overwhelmingly those who have the least that do the most to help their fellow humans in need.
Greed and starving the beast.
That’s what is going on. Profits in pharmaceuticals are roaring, (although I don’t think Big Pharma is going to be happy about Medicare cuts that limit meds people can pay for). The costs of medicine bear little relation to their development cost. Yes, research is costly. But until Big Pharma spends a lot more on research than they do on advertising, I am not sympathetic. I recently looked at a women’s magazine that I used to see regularly as a child because my mother bought one every month at the grocery store. There were 17 pages of ads for drugs of one sort or another! 17.
Many drugs are also developed through research funded first by the National Institutes of Health. Yet the prices for medications developed from this research, do not seem to benefit the U. S. citizenry in any way.
As for Starving the Beast – Grover Norquist & others talk about wanting to end Medicare. Have people’s families take responsibility for their medical care. Do this by having other government programs (like the military) cost so much that there is no choice but to cut these program. Of course, in “starving the beast”, children with starve, and sicken, and die, literally. God forbid that anyone who is poor have a psychiatric disorder – they are the budget-cutter’s dream: people who don’t vote, who are stigmatized by almost everyone, who are seen as unworthy and unwelcome in almost every community.
I don’t blame the states or their governors for the Medicare/Medicaid cuts. Most states have legal requirements for balanced budgets. But the money that has been going to our most fragile citizens is now going into the pockets of our wealthiest citizens. See what kind of care they get if their child has a neuroblastoma.
Sometimes I just can’t bear to think about all of the ways this is happening in our country. I live in Minnesota, a place that has always been a leader in recognizing that we are “our brother’s (and sister’s) keeper.” Now we have a Republican governor who has promised the wingers that he will NOT raise taxes to deal with budget shortfalls. As of last Friday, our state government shut down because the Democratically controlled senate, Republican House and Republican governor cannot agree on a budget.
On Sunday, a winger commentator in the St. Paul newspaper compared the impasse to a family who has to decide that they can’t afford a new stereo system. A F’ING STEREO SYSTEM!!! I’m so mad I can’t see straight. The driver for the shutdown is the inability to figure out how to cover health care costs for children, poor and the elderly. You can bet that I wrote him a nasty email. Its just unimaginable how dense these people can be.
Interesting that the only national healthcare plan is already run by the government. [But we don’t want that nasy beast loosed upon the populace, eh?] I’ll take Kaiser as a national model – if law is passed to even allow a national plan.
See, national plans are illegal. Did they leave that part out?
Last I heard he is turning most of Medicaid over to private companies. I guess they in turn can do whatever they wish to whomever they wish.
It is tragic, and I don’t hear many congressman in either party speaking up about it at all.