Cutting Benefits When They’re Needed Most
posted by Frank Pasquale
Three years ago health law scholar John Jacobi warned of “Dangerous Times for Medicaid.” At the time the main threats were ideologically driven; now state budget cuts are doing the damage. As Amy Goldstein notes in the WaPo, the situation is critical:
With revenue falling at the same time that more people are losing their jobs and private health coverage, states already have pared their programs and many are looking at deeper cuts for the coming year. Already, 19 states — including Maryland and Virginia — and the District of Columbia have lowered payments to hospitals and nursing homes, eliminated coverage for some treatments, and forced some recipients out of the insurance program completely.
It’s one more sad example of the procyclical nature of federalism here–states have less tax revenue during recessions, when need is greatest. No one should be surprised if more and more of the newly uninsured jobless, denied even basic dental care due to such cuts, fall into a “death spiral” of unemployment, disfiguring ailments, and a tendency to be underemployed due to such ailments.
PS: The WaPo has a nice Medicaid aggregation page.
December 26, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Posted in: Health Law
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Responses (3)
Cathy - December 27, 2008 at 12:15 pm
You are absolutely right and that is why Congress and the Administration must act quickly to shore up Medicaid and SCHIP. States and the uninsured families they are trying to help are caught in a vice grip of decreasing state revenues and increasing need as more and more Americans lose their jobs and health care coverage. Check out the Georgetown Center for Children and Families report Keeping the Promise to America’s Children and Families in Tough Economic Times at http://ccf.georgetown.edu for policy options.
Cathy - December 27, 2008 at 12:15 pm
You are absolutely right and that is why Congress and the Administration must act quickly to shore up Medicaid and SCHIP. States and the uninsured families they are trying to help are caught in a vice grip of decreasing state revenues and increasing need as more and more Americans lose their jobs and health care coverage. Check out the Georgetown Center for Children and Families report Keeping the Promise to America’s Children and Families in Tough Economic Times at http://ccf.georgetown.edu for policy options.
Stuart Buck - December 29, 2008 at 2:25 pm
How is this a problem of “federalism”? If incomes are falling nationwide, the federal government presumably has less tax revenue too.
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