Pennsylvania Man Confronts His Governor For Refusing To Expand Medicaid: ‘How Many People Have To Die?’

BY TARA CULP-RESSLER/Think Progress

This week, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) had a run-in with one of his constituents as he was leaving a fundraising event. Scot Rosenzweig — who identified himself as a fellow Republican — showed Corbett a large photograph of his fiancee, Dina Nelson, who died at the age of 41 because she was uninsured and couldn’t afford a liver transplant. “I think maybe we should consider accepting the Medicaid expansion,” Rosenzweig told his governor, explaining that people like Nelson need access to lifesaving health treatment.

“I can’t do that,” Corbett responded.

Corbett is one of 25 governors who have declined to accept Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion, a move that is preventing an estimated 700,000 low-income Pennsylvanians from accessing public health insurance. Rather than accepting the federal funds designated for expanding his state’s Medicaid pool, Corbett is trying to win federal approval for analternate plan, called “Healthy Pennsylvania,” that would give low-income people subsidies to buy private coverage. But Corbett’s plan has been sharply criticized by anti-poverty advocates, who say it could actually reduce benefits for the state’s neediest constituents.

In his exchange with Rosenzweig, Corbett reiterated his desire to implement “Healthy Pennsylvania,” which he hopes to put in place by 2015. He said he can’t both accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and fix the existing problems he sees with the Medicaid program. But that didn’t satisfy Rosenzweig.

“How many people have to die while we work on the problems?” he asked Corbett.

Watch it, courtesy of SEIU Healthcare PA:

Rosenzweig was one of several activists protesting outside of the closed-door luncheon that Corbett attended on Tuesday with representatives from the Chamber of Commerce. Press was not allowed at the event. The handful of Pennsylvania residents — all of whom knew Nelson, and some of whom were involved in the Homecare Workers Union with her — protested for a chance to have a seat at the table and discuss Medicaid expansion with the governor.

“If Dina had access to good, preventative healthcare services when she needed it, her life would have been saved,” Rosenzweig told the Sun Gazette. “Gov. Corbett needs to hear more stories like Dina’s about the real impact of his decision to delay Medicaid expansion. How many lives lost are enough?”

Pennsylvania residents have been pushing for Medicaid expansion for months. This past summer, health care advocates staged a “sick-in” outside the governor’s mansion to pressure Corbett to consider the human cost of neglecting to expand the public program. One activist was arrested after chalking a message on the sidewalk — “Governor Corbett has health insurance, we should too” — because local law enforcement claimed it was a “derogatory remark” about the Pennsylvania leader.

Across the country, an estimated five million low-income Americans will be unable to access affordable health coverage because of their governors’ refusal to expand Medicaid. The resistance to this particular Obamacare provision has a disproportionate impact on people of color. It also has the potential to put a financial strain on businesses and hospitals.

Romney Champions Medicaid In Ohio, Doesn’t Mention Proposal For Severe Cuts

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

During a rally in Mt. Vernon, Ohio on Wednesday, Mitt Romney touted the benefits of Medicaid and claimed that all Americans will be able to obtain health care insurance without President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Responding to a question from a woman whose son suffers from Spina Bifida, Romney disparaged Obama’s health care measure — which would expand access to 30 million Americans — and claimed that the law is unnecessary for people suffering from chronic conditions:

ROMNEY: Actually, we had health care in America before Obamacare came along. And we still have health care in America…Each of us today in America has a choice of the type of health care plan we might choose. People who are poor are able to get Medicaid, which is a government support effort for those who can’t afford to have insurance. And these things aren’t going to disappear without Obamacare.

Watch it:

Advocates of expanding services for people with chronic or life-threatening conditions disagree with Romney’s assessment, however, noting that the law’s new consumer protections and Medicaid expansion would benefit the sickest Americans. “We believe that although the Affordable Care Act is not perfect and is certain to evolve over time, it is
already improving and will continue to improve the lives of people with chronic conditions,” the National Health Council said in a statement that was signed by 30 health groups. Cindy Brownstein, President & CEO of the Spina Bifida Association, was among the signatories.

Romney and Ryan would repeal the Affordable Care Act and significantly reduce federal funding to Medicaid, which assists millions of American families with members suffering from mental and physical disabilities. Half of the program’s 63 million enrollees are children, and rural children are particularly at risk. Romney and Ryan would shift Medicaid’s costs to state budgets, leaving them to shoulder any added demands on the program alone. In order to meet his other budget priorities, Romney would have to cut Medicaid by as much as “32 percent in 2016 and 53 percent in 2022.” Some 44 million Americans could lose coverage as a result.

Why Mitt Romney’s Medicaid Cuts Are Even More Draconian Than Paul Ryan’s

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Medicaid, which is funded jointly by the states and the federal government, provides health coverage to approximately 53 million lower income Americans. The federal government matches state spending on a per-claim basis and pays a percentage of each state’s Medicaid costs (anywhere between 50 and 75 percent). Conservatives like House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and the GOP presidential contenders have proposed reducing the federal government’s commitment to the program by block granting Medicaid and paying states pre-established grants that may not reflect actual costs. The reduction in federal spending would require states to either appropriate additional funding towards Medicaid or lower program expenditures by cutting provider payment rates, limiting eligibility, and reducing benefits, the CBO has concluded.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) has endorsed Ryan’s block grant proposal, and yesterday, during a radio interview with Sean Hannity, he revealed that his cuts to Medicaid could be even more draconian than Ryan’s. Ryan already aims to shrink the federal government’s contribution to Medicaid by 35 percent in 2022, converting the existing federal matching rate for each state into a block grant and growing the grant by approximately 3 percent annually (as compared to the estimated 6.5 percent to 7 percent annual growth* in federal expenditures that would occur under current law). Romney told Hannity that he would grow his Medicaid block grants by just 1 to 2 percent per year:

ROMNEY: It’s mathematically pretty straight forward how you hold down costs, which is you say, we’re going to cut it by a certain amount and then comes the hard work of saying where you’re going to cut it. And that why I’ve laid out a plan that balances our budget…taking Medicaid and giving it back to the states and growing it only 1 to 2 percent a year.

Listen:

Comparatively, Romney’s reductions would result in even steeper cuts that would affect tens of millions of low-income Medicaid beneficiaries — seniors in nursing homes, people with disabilities, children — for whom the program has become a critical source of coverage. A very rough back-of-the envelope calculation using the CBO’s projected federal Medicaid expenditures for 2012 as a baseline (and then growing that number by 1.5 percent annually through 2021) demonstrates the sheer magnitude of Rommey’s cuts as compared to current law and Ryan’s plan. The results show that Romney could reduce the size of the program by more than 40 percent over that period:

* Via Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), this percentage normalizes the growth rate to take out the effects of 2014.

Perry Touts Reductions To Safety Net Health Programs, But Says He’s ‘Not Ready’ To Cut Defense

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Rick Perry’s new economic plan calls for significant changes to the country’s health care programs, a la Paul Ryan, including raising the Medicare eligibility age and potentially pushing seniors out of the government health care program and into the private health insurance market. The Texas governor also reiterates his proposal to transform the current federal matching rate states receive for Medicaid into a pre-established block grant that does not keep up with actual health care costs.

Perry touted his “spending reduction” during an appearance on Fox News Business last night, stressing that while he’s willing to significantly cut the nation’s safety net programs, he won’t limit military spending:

PERRY: We know that one of the places that Mr. [Ron] Paul is going to talk about cutting and that’s in defense. And I will tell you, I’m not ready to put our national defense on the line for that kind of a meat cleaver. So there is obviously places we can cut…you look at what Paul Ryan is doing on Medicare. There are some great members of the Congress that have plans that can help us reduce spending and let me tell you, that’s what we need to have.

Watch it:

But Perry has it backwards: cuts to the military would likely have almost zero impact on national security — as they would target the many wasteful, costly weapons programs, many of which are barely even used. Reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, on the other hand, wouldsignificantly increase costs for beneficiaries and the nation and undermine care for lower-income Americans who need it most.

Opinion surveys show that the public shares these priorities and routinely ranks cutting defense spending ahead of Medicare and Medicaid cuts.

VIDEO: Right-Wing Hypocrisy On ‘Mediscare’

By Jeff Spross

The right wing is not happy with the rhetorical attacks the Democrats are launching against the budget recently passed by the House GOP. Conservatives complain that it’s unfair criticism to note that their budget dismantles Medicare by transforming it into an exceedingly stingy voucher scheme.

Everyone — from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the architect of the budget plan, to GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, to House Majority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), to conservative media personality Sean Hannity — has taken up the cry that Democrats are engaging in demagogic “Mediscare” tactics. Moreover, 42 House GOP freshmen sent a letter to President Obama in May asking him “to rein in Democratic attacks on GOP members who voted for the House budget.”

Given the unusually earnest — and frankly, moralistic — tone of the Republicans’ objections to the Democrats’ criticism of the GOP plan, it’s worth reviewing exactly how these same conservative reacted to the Democrats’ own health care reform package back in 2009:

GOP Freshman Ends First Town Hall After Tough Questions On Tax Cuts For The Wealthy: ‘We’re Done’

By Alex Seitz-Wald

Freshman Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) became the latest Republican to face the ire of his own constituents for voting for the Medicare-ending GOP budget when he was repeatedly challenged by attendees at a town hall meeting in Jonesboro, AR last night. At his first town hallsince being seated, Crawford had attendees write their questions on index cards and then read them out loud, “but a handful of audience members weren’t satisfied andshouted at Crawford from their seats.”

While Republicans have insisted that their budget saves Medicare, Crawford veered off message at one point, responding to the question “why are you going to end Medicare as we know it?” by saying, “the answer to that is because Medicare as we know is bankrupt.”

Later, Crawford faced a heated question about why the GOP budget cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations while slashing social services. Crawford replied, “I don’t support tax cuts for the wealthy over help for socio-economically challenged individuals.” A number of his constituents repeatedly challenged him on this claim, accusing Crawford of “class warfare against the poor people” and explaining that tax cuts don’t create jobs. Crawford apparently did not appreciate this, and ended the session:

CONSTITUENT 1: [The GOP budget ] is a significant tax cut for the wealthy.
CRAWFORD: A 10 percent tax cut?
CONSTITUENT 2: Wouldn’t that be class warfare against the poor people?
CRAWFORD: Well, you’re asking me if I want to continue taxing at a higher rate the people that are creating jobs and no –
CONSTITUENT 2: They’re not creating jobs, though! They haven’t created any more jobs! … They’re taking them all overseas!
CONSTITUENT 3: Are you taking any more questions?
CRAWFORD: No, we’re done.
CONSTITUENT 3: We’re done?
CRAWFORD: We’re done.
CONSTITUENT 4: During the Bush administration, and the tax cuts, how many jobs were created?
CRAWFORD: I don’t have those numbers.
CONSTITUENT 4: Three million. During the Clinton administration, where he raised taxes on the highest bracket to 39.5, how many jobs were created? 22 million. You’re going to tell me that tax cuts create jobs?!

Watch a video shot by Arkansas progressive blog Blue Arkansas, and edited by ThinkProgress for length (full videos here):

Crawford walked away from the podium and left the meeting moments later.

House Republicans Pass Plan To Phase Out Medicare, Slash Medicaid

Brian Beutler

House Republicans voted Friday in favor of a vision of the future without Medicare, with a significantly eroded Medicaid, and with lower taxes on wealthy Americans. By a vote of 235-193, they passed their budget resolution -- an opening bid in a broader partisan fight about spending and taxes that will dominate politics in Washington, DC for the rest of the year.

Four Republicans voted with all Democrats against the so-called "Path to Prosperity." Two Republicans and five Democratsdidn't vote.

It's also political poison. The GOP plan would slowly phase out the current Medicare system and replace it by offering beneficiaries partially subsidized private insurance (ironically, much like Obamacare). It would turn Medicaid into a block-grant program, allowing states to roll back currently guaranteed benefits for the poor and disabled. And it would eliminate most of the savings achieved from cutting these entitlements lowering the tax burden on wealthy Americans.

It was almost worse. Earlier in the day, Republicans fell prey to a Democratic procedural tactic and nearly voted to replace the plan they passed with an even farther-reaching one. Republicans didn't whip any of the alternative budgets, and were caught flat-footed when Democrats voted "present" on a more conservative proposal, leading to pandemonium on the House floor.

As an early salvo in his re-election fight, President Obama criticized Republicans for creating the looming fiscal crisis with reckless policies in the last decade, and for proposing to fix it on the backs of the most vulnerable Americans

"We contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, those with disabilities. We're a better country because of these commitments," Obama said. "I'll go further. We would not be a great country without those commitments."

Though the budget has no future in the Senate, House Republicans have put themselves on the line for a political whipping as severe the one they received when they tried to privatize Social Security in 2005.

Jan Brewer: ‘If People Are So Worried’ About My Medicaid Cuts, Ask Washington To Send Me More Money

By Tanya Somanader Anxious over serious state deficits, many Republican governors have decried Medicaid as the “monster” eating at the budget. Chief among them is Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who is committed to gutting Arizona’s Medicaid program at the expense of transplant patients. Ignoring pleas from Democratic lawmakers and transplant patients to restore the $1.4 million in funding to the transplant program, Brewer insists that such “optional,” “Cadillac” treatment for the dying must go toward recouping one-tenth of a percent from Arizona’s projected budget shortfall.

Brewer is no stranger to sacrificing the welfare of vulnerable constituents for a buck. But this particularly callous dogma made enough waves across the pond to bring Britain’s Channel 4 News Washington correspondent Sarah Smith to her doorstep. Confounded by Brewer’s dismissal of the lives her decision damns, Smith asked Brewer “how many people have to die” before she’d reverse her position. Calling the “obvious” question “unfair,” Brewer then quipped that “if people are so worried about the transplant patients, then they should ask the federal government in Washington to send us more money”:

I managed to “doorstep” her as we call it in TV – i.e. I caught her at a public event and just started asking questions, uninvited.

“How many people have to die before you are prepared to reverse your decision on the transplant operations?” seemed like the obvious question.

She said she thought that was unfair and started to explain how dire the state’s financial situation is. If people are so worried about the transplant patients then they should ask the federal government in Washington to send us more money, she said. But she would not explain to me, or to any Democrats in the state capitol, what she has done with the nearly $200 million she was already given in ‘stimulus funds’ to spend on anything she liked.

While suggesting that Arizonans should request more federal funding, Brewer openly vilifies a law — the Affordable Care Act — that provides exactly that. The health care law’s Medicaid expansion will foot 100 percent of the bill for states to expand until 2016 and 90 percent after 2020. However, to receive this funding, states have to maintain current eligibility levels in Medicaid and CHIP, something Brewer does not wish to maintain. And despite being well-aware of Arizona’s need for the health care law’s financial support, Brewer remains an outspoken champion of its full-scale repeal. In other words, Brewer is telling transplant advocates to ask for a helping hand she fully intends to bite.

While such dismissive treatment of those in need paints this Republican in a miserable light, Smith notes that Brewer’s position does help the GOP out in one notable way. In their interminable search for proof of health care “death panels,” right-wing Republicans need look no further than Arizona.

M.C.L Comment: I wonder what's governor nerd stance on Michigan's medicaid?

Arizona ‘death panel’? State Medicaid cuts poised to let some poor patients die

By Sahil Kapur

A law in Arizona that cuts Medicaid funding for certain transplant operations is likely to bring about the deaths of poor residents in need of such procedures.

Starting in October, a measure passed by the Republican-led state legislature began denying Medicaid funds for organ transplants such as bone-marrow, lung, heart and liver transplants, which can be very expensive and are often performed in life-threatening cases.

The New York Times reports that Arizona doctors deem it a "a death sentence for some low-income patients, who have little chance of survival without transplants and lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them."

Procuring Medicaid funds for such procedures can require poor patients to sit on a waiting list for lengthy periods of time, and the law is denying funding to those who have waited for years before its enactment.

"I appreciate the need for budget restraints," Dr. Andrew Yeager, director of the Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program at the Arizona Cancer Center, told the Times. “But when one looks at a potentially lifesaving treatment, admittedly expensive, and we have data to support efficacy, cuts like this are shortsighted and sad."

The law has brought about a wrenching twist of fate for Arizona patients who need a transplant but lack the money, especially those at the front of the waiting list and denied the option at the last minute.

Arizona physicians and transplant centers have unsuccessfully lobbied for temporary funding. Republican Gov. Jan Brewer's office described it as a "literally as a last resort" option to bridge the state's budget shortfall.

But Democrats, such as State Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor, weren't having any of it. “We made it very clear at the time of the vote that this was a death sentence,” she said. “This is not a luxury item. We’re not talking about cosmetic surgery.”

The law has been dubbed across the country by opponents as Arizona's "Death Panel" -- a reference to Sarah Palin's false yet influential claim last year that the Affordable Care Act permitted government officials to deny care to patients at their discretion.

The Associated Press chronicled the plight of Arizona patients on Medicaid who need organ transplants and must produce the money or face death.

"Something needs to be done," said Dr. Emmanuel Katsanis, a bone marrow transplant expert at the University of Arizona, according to the Times. “There’s no doubt that people aren’t going to make it because of this decision. What do you tell someone? You need a transplant but you have to raise the money?”

M.C.L Comments: The average right winger who reads this probably don't give a flying rat ass about what happen to those people who are desperate need of these transplants and other things the state cover because their lords and masters on right wing radio tells them these people are the reason their taxes are high and they shouldn't care. Remember right wingers never is guarantee and you could find yourself needing this help and like these people your state GOP tell you sorry you're own your own.

Joe Miller Received Medicaid Benefits He Thinks Are Unconstitutional

By Ian Millhiser Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller(R-farting is unconstitutional) has repeatedly claimed that federal health care benefits violate the Constitution. It turns out, however, that “Mr. Noun, Verb, and Unconstitutional” doesn’t actually think that the Constitution applies to himself. Yesterday, Miller acknowledged that the received the very same kind of federally funded health care benefits that he believes to be unconstitutional:

U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller acknowledged Thursday that in the past his family received assistance from federal Medicaid and Denali KidCare, the state low income health care program. His opponents in the race responded that he’s a hypocrite for taking assistance while now saying federal entitlement programs are unconstitutional.

Miller’s campaign didn’t provide an answer for for the past week-and-a-half did not answer when asked what low-income assistance he has received. But Miller addressed it Thursday when asked by reporters after a debate in Anchorage, saying people are entitled to know about his past benefits but “it’s a bit of a distraction from where we’re at today.”

Miller attempts to distract from his own hypocrisy by pointing out that he only objects to federally-funded health care benefits, claiming that it is “ultimately a state decision” whether or not to provide a basic safety net to the nation’s least fortunate. But this claim does nothing to change the fact that the Medicaid benefits Miller accepted are paid in part by the federal government — a violation of Miller’s bizarre view of the Constitution.

And Miller isn’t just a hypocrite, he also has no idea what he is talking about. Had Miller actually bothered to read the Constitution, he would know that Congress has the power to “to lay and collect taxes” and to “provide for the . . . general welfare of the United States.” Federal health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid clearly fit within this power to raise revenue and spend it to benefit the nation at large. Additionally, Miller’s proposal for a state takeover of federal entitlement programs is economically impossible unless America forbids its citizens from retiring in a different state than the one that they paid taxes in while working.

There is one thing that’s clear from Miller’s actions, however. He is perfectly happy to leave millions of other people helpless against the twin dragons of poverty and disease, but there is no way that he is going to follow his own draconian rules.