There seems to be a general assumption that when people talk about cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, it has to do with poor people. In fact, the cuts affect middle class working families the hardest, by targeting anyone who isn't rich enough to pay for keeping a medically needy child or grandparent at home and out of an institution.
It is normal for about two-thirds of every state's Medicaid budget to go, not for people who qualify from poverty or unemployment, but to the medical care of children and adults with disabilities, whether from birth, accident, age or illness. These are middle class American families who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid; they are trying to care at home for a child, a grandmother, a sibling who qualifies for Medicaid on the basis of disability through what are called "waiver programs" (because family income/assets are "waived" in calculating eligibility).
That sixty-six to seventy percent of every state's Medicaid budget is what is up for grabs when companies like Wellcare gloat in their year-end reports that forty states are considering turning their ABD (aged, blind and disabled) population over to private contractors.
In Florida, for instance, the ABD population could be expected to account for somewhere between $12 and $14 billion, considering the $20 billion annual budget. Private contracts for ABD services were handed out to companies like Amerigroup last year. The newly elected governor of Florida, who vowed after the election to parcel out the state's entire Medicaid population to private contractors, recently announced he was filling a $174 million budget deficit by decreasing the rates paid to caregivers by 15%. Lowering reimbursement rates helps insurance companies decrease their Medical Loss Ratio thereby increasing profits. The family can either take another job to try to supplement the medical services lost, or put their family member in a hospital or institution. Again, it's the insurance company holding the state Medicaid contract for the ABD population and/or long term care who makes out.
Meanwhile Florida's state legislature is trying to rewrite Medicaid. One proposal would change the name of the Medically Needy program to the Medicaid Nonpoverty Medical Subsidy, while eliminating coverage of hospitals and medications.
What are adults with catastrophic illnesses supposed to do without medications?
Splitting up state Medicaid populations into "risk-based health maintenance organizations" will affect people who qualify because of poverty or unemployment, yes. But with two-thirds of any state's budget spent on the much smaller aged, blind and disabled population, the biggest impact is where the companies get the biggest bang for the buck saved. Capitation contracts are hard to come by, but I published Hawaii's a long time ago, verifying that individual budgets can go as high as $29,000 a month. This is not money spent on somebody because they are poor, it is money allocated to the home nursing care for someone who is so disabled they cannot live on their own.
Wasting up to twenty percent of our federal and state budgets for Medicaid and Medicare on CEO salaries and corporate profits is hurting millions of average middle class Americans whose only fault is wanting to keep their families, including their most vulnerable members, together.
Please visit this petition to put a stop to Wall Street's pillaging of Medicaid and Medicare. Every signature sends an email to Deputy Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez, Secretary Duncan of Education and Secretary Sebelius of DHHS to stop this attack on our civil and patient rights.
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