Throw the B.S. flag of the day at Deb Bowman, senior advisor to Governor Dennis Daugaard. Jon Walker discusses in today's paper the bind perhaps 26,000 low-income South Dakotans will find themselves in thanks to the Governor's refusal to expand Medicaid.
When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act kicks in full force on October 1, working families will be able to buy insurance on the PPACA's state health insurance exchanges. Thanks to PPACA premium subsidies, families like mine will save thousands on health insurance. But those subsidies go only to folks earning between 100% and 400% of the poverty level. The PPACA assumes that folks making less than that can get help through its Medicaid expansions.
But in states like South Dakota that are rejecting the Medicaid expansion, working folks who make just under the poverty level are left in the lurch, qualifying for neither a premium subsidy or Medicaid.
So whom does Deb Bowman blame? The PPACA:
“I think it’s a flaw in the Affordable Care Act. I know the act was written with the assumption that states had to expand Medicaid ... but to have an act written really so the poorest of the poor are not eligible for the subsidies just seems very unfortunate,” said Deb Bowman, a senior adviser to Gov. Dennis Daugaard [Jon Walker, "The Poor Squeezed Out in Health Care Reform," that Sioux Falls paper, 2013.08.12].
Grrrr! If Bowman and her boss the Governor gave a darn about helping the folks stuck in the premium subsidy gap or simple truth, they'd acknowledge that this gap is their own fault. The PPACA had no such gap in its original form, which required all states to expand Medicaid. That requirement was the only part of the PPACA overturned by the Supreme Court last year in the lawsuit brought by South Dakota and other states. South Dakota is now creating that gap by refusing the Medicaid expansion. South Dakota could make the premium gap disappear by reversing that decision and expanding Medicaid so that the PPACA would work for our working poor the way it was intended. But Governor Daugaard countersensically refuses to do so, putting political maneuvering above the health, economic, and fiscal well-being of our state.
The PPACA was not written to leave out the poorest of the poor. Governor Daugaard is making and Deb Bowman is defending policy decisions that leave out the poorest of the poor. It's unfortunate that Deb Bowman won't tell the truth and take responsibility for South Dakota's actions.
Governor Daugarrd does not understand that less federal money will be sent to our community hospitals because they will have to treat fewer uninsured patients and without the Medicaid expansion, our hospitals will lose that money, but still have to care for those uninsured.
Most of us believe that prevention and early intervention of disease will improve everyone’s health and will curb the rising cost of health care in the long run. Controlling health care cost by having insurance is part of the solution, and not having insurance is a problem addressed with the ACA.
The fact is, our state government will bear the entire cost of the expansion under the new law. Even if the Governor is worried about the small increase in state Medicaid cost, the savings the state will enjoy from less-subsidized, uncompensated-care of the uninsured who will be on Medicaid will cancel out any increase on behalf of the state.
Another example of why Daugaard's reign has been a failure. The guy is not a leader, he is a puppet.
OK…She’s saying PPACA should have made provisions to cover those poor unfortunate souls…by putting in the chips up front to cover their cost, right? (I thought the feds were doing that.) But allowing the state to be in control of their own Medicaid system while federally fronting the dollars to cover those extra people doesn’t qualify as such…to have the act written so that my boss (DD) has to admit that he’s taking those federal dollars and helping those poor unfortunate souls is something we just can’t tolerate…Congress should have known that PPACA was going to survive the Supreme Court challenge (backed by my boss) but that the Medicaid expansion portion of the law was going to be knocked out, and that then we’d be backed into the corner of displeasing the life is simple crowd if we accepted the federal chips…or something like that…right? OK, got it...I think...
Medicaid, by the way, was a Republican idea. It was a way to leverage federal funds for what had always been a state and local government obligation. The problem was most states had been shirking their responsibilities because it became too expensive for states to do the job adequately on their own.
It's not surprising that state shirking today is being led by people like Daugaard and Walker. These are people who are trying to justify their retrograde policies by accusing the federal government of shirking because they were going to give states a little help to do the right thing.
Unlike South Dakota, some states had already expanded Medicaid appreciably, and encouraged reforms that had most of our population covered. Under Governor both Governor Thompson and Governor Doyle, Wisconsin had vastly expanded BadgerCare. Governor Walker has rolled back these reforms under the direction of the Koch Brothers and Heritage Foundation. Daugaard and Bowman seem to be getting direction from the same places.
Donald brings up a very painful point that is ignored by the ideological right...ObamaCare was their idea!
Now their whole mantra is the number one priority, the one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don't have health care.
So people of SD, just feel better that out of spite for a president who looks different and is not from their party, they are more than willing to have the most vulnerable...who aren't big money donors...make sure that DD's son-in-law keeps his ALEC VIP card.
Sad.
Not only was "Obamacare" a Republican idea, it was congressional Republicans who messed up the idea with idiotic amendments and traps in their blind desire to make sure Obama did not get a second term. That Mitch plan sure worked well. After voting 40 times to defund Obamacare, I guess they must think Obama is going to somehow run again..perhaps under a real American name and address. That would be interesting.
Nevermind..........
Bob Mercer has a great story up on AAN about what the Governor should do. Worth the read.
http://www.aberdeennews.com/news/bobmercer/aan-capitol-notebook-sd-should-help-implement-health-care-law-20131025,0,1472532.story?track=rss
BAH on the Obamacares. Mercer is in the pocket of the libbies.
grud: heal thine own.