Has the Killing Already Started?

June 5, 2009 (LPAC)—By the conservative estimates of the Premier Health Care Alliance, for every one percent rise in U.S. unemployment, Medicaid enrollment rises by one million people, costing states an additional $1.4 billion.

Because President Obama decided to bail out Wall Street, and refused to go with LaRouche's bankruptcy reorganization, unemployment keeps on rising, and rising, and rising, hitting a 26-year high of 9.4% as of the end of May, according to figures released by the Labor Department today. That's 0.5% more than the month before. Add in discouraged workers and those whose hours have been cut back to part-time, and real unemployment is now at 16.4%, officially.

Simultaneously, Medicaid, funded in part by state revenues, is already disappearing, before President Obama's announced intention to cut $5-600 billion out of federal spending on Medicaid/Medicare Has even started.

July 1 is the start of a new fiscal year in 48 states, and state governments are now in the throes of deciding how to cutback or deny care, or otherwise "disenroll" some of the 49 million poor who have come to receive medical treatment under the Federal Medicaid program, which is administered through the states, and funded by Federal and state monies combined, with each state deciding eligibility within their state. For most states, Medicaid now ranks first or second of expenditures from the state general fund budgets. The national average is for 17 percent of state budgets to go to Medicaid, and related health care for the poor. Already by 2005, Medicaid was financing the births of nearly 40% of children born in the United States, according to Senators Maria Cantwell, Hillary Clinton, and others fighting the Bush administration's attempt to cut Medicaid funding then.

Four years later, there are no cuts left, in any state, that do not mean killing people. Unwilling to take responsibility for willfully deciding who should live and who should die, the state of Washington has come up with the wild proposal to hold a lottery with the names of 100,000 persons currently in "Basic Health Plan" for the poor, and let "chance" decide which 36,000 of them will be ejected from coverage, since there is funding only for 64,000! This extreme recourse has not yet been approved, but it has been ratified to cut close to 40,000 off the state's "Basic Health Plan" by Jan. 1, 2010. This "Basic Health Plan" was set up in 1988 to provide insurance coverage to poor, childless, non-disabled adults, below the Medicare-age of 65 years, and with earnings less than twice the poverty level, but who don't qualify for the state's Medicaid program, which has an enrollment of about 1.5 million persons. Now the state lacks the funding to keep "Basic Health Plan" going for the 100,000 enrollees.

President Obama has recently been referring to the "90 million" people now covered by Medicare and Medicaid (44 million Medicare and 49 million Medicaid), as a problem he wants to solve by "comprehensive health care reform," and gutting of their funding. He, and the officials supporting his programs, cannot hide from the fact that the results of these cuts, planned and already underway, are genocidal. Consider the effect on women and newborns alone:

The following are a few of the state crisis situations:

North Carolina. On June 2, a group of state health, church and social leaders held a press conference to beg for retaining Medicaid and other essential programs. Deep health care cuts are planned for the fiscal year beginning July 1, in order to slash $1 billion out of the state budget deficit of $4.6 billion. In addition to slashing education funding by 12%, it is proposed: to "save" $91 million by reducing reimbursements to doctors and hospitals that treat poor Medicaid patients; to cut $50 million in services to the mentally ill, substance-abusers and related; to cut $49 million in services to the infirm. "I truly believe that some people would die because of this budget," said John Tote, Director of the Mental Health Association in North Carolina, to the Associated Press this week. North Carolina has 1.7 million Medicaid enrollees.

Wyoming. Spending reductions for Medicaid-related programs were announced June 4 by Governor Dave Freudenthal. Of his proposed cut of $230 million out of the state's budget beginning July 1, the largest amount comes from health care. He wrote in a letter to legislators, "The Department of Health has identified nearly $43 million in General Fund reductions, most of which come in the Medicaid budget, since it makes up the largest program within the department, and in provider reimbursement rates....there is no doubt that these budget cuts will have a significant impact on the provider community" (physicians, clinics, hospitals, labs). Wyoming has only 85,000 Medicaid enrollees, but besides threats to their medical treatment, the cuts threaten to further bring down what's left of the thin health care infrastructure in this rural state.

California. Of the 49 million Medicaid enrollees nationwide, 10.6 million of them reside in California. On June 4 in San Diego, a group of physicians, church leaders and others held a press conference to protest Gov. Schwarzenegger's cuts to state health programs. Spending on Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program, is being cut drastically, as is the state's "Health Families," the state's Children's Health Insurance Program. Schwarzenegger is proposing to cut many of the state's specialty programs, such Alzheimers patients assistance, run through 10 state centers, and similar support plans.

Illinois. Gov. Quinn's tax panel recommended yesterday an across the board 2-3% cut in state operating budgets, including cutting $95 million out of Medicaid.

Hawaii. With a budget deficit of $730 million, Gov. Linda Lingle wants to slash spending across the board, including $42 million in state healthcare benefit cuts for 120,000 low-income adults.