Health Care

I don't want to go into a rant once again about what the government is doing to my husband on health care. I've already written about it and the only change is for the worse.

Now he's expected to pay a $1,400 deductible per month (out of a not quite $900 income) for the state program to cover his co-pay. We sink a little deeper each month. They've begun billing us for the premiums on prescription drug coverage and have double his co-pay on prescriptions. He takes a lot of medicine and it all adds up.

If it's happening to us, it's happening all over the country. How can they possibly justify a monthly deductible higher than his Social Security?

Our local mental health unit has been laying off people and refusing treatment to many of their clients. You're suicidal? They give you the number of the local help line. Homicidal? I guess they wait until you kill someone.

I'm ranting and I said I wouldn't. They also plan, at least here in CA, to cut services to special needs kids which includes our Elcie. I don't know yet what that will entail.

We're not parasites; we've both worked all our lives to keep our heads barely above water. He worked until he could no longer and I gave up employment to care for the girls.

The system is broken.

Evidently, the New York Times agrees. Here, as reprinted in Truthout today, is what they said.

Passing the Buck on Health Care
The New York Times Editorial

Monday 12 February 2007

President Bush's new budget would extend the administration's warped priorities deep into the realm of federally supported health care programs. The administration long ago sacrificed any meaningful domestic agenda to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and its reckless war in Iraq. The White House's reckless determination to make the tax cuts permanent is now driving it to slash domestic spending in health and other vital programs.

Instead of trying to address the underlying problems of escalating health care costs, Mr. Bush's strategy is to cut services or shift more of the bill to states, health care providers and individuals.

In the Medicare program, which covers health care for Americans aged 65 and over, the administration would find most of its savings by slowing the annual increase in reimbursements for services, forcing hospitals and other providers to absorb the burden. Given Medicare's precarious financial straits, the package appears broadly acceptable.

The real outrage is that the administration has not proposed comparable reductions in the large overpayments - roughly 12 percent more per patient - made to private managed care plans that enroll Medicare beneficiaries. The budget would also phase out Medicare bad-debt payments, forcing hospitals to swallow beneficiaries' unpaid bills.

The budget also looks to save money by eliminating inflation indexing so that as incomes rise, so would the number of people required to pay higher premiums. Although this is a sneaky way to raise premiums, it is hard to argue with the notion that better-off beneficiaries should pay more to help rescue a financially strained program.

What seems counterproductive is Mr. Bush's plan to lower federal matching funds for Medicaid administration - forcing the states to find more of their own funds or sacrifice good management and oversight. More worrisome is his plan to cut back on state programs that insure the young.

The most shortsighted restrictions would come in the highly acclaimed State Children's Health Insurance Program, which uses federal matching funds to provide coverage for low- and moderate-income children who are not quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. The program has been enormously successful in reducing the number of uninsured children. Yet now the administration wants to reduce its matching rate and limit enrollment to children in households earning no more than twice the federal poverty level. That would undercut programs in 16 states that have expanded coverage to children above that level.

Although the administration's budget would grant the children's program a small $5 billion increase spread over five years, that's less than half, and possibly only a third, of the amount needed just to maintain current enrollments and participation rates. This is too high a price to pay for more tax cuts and Mr. Bush's ill-managed presidency.