Remember the Repubs passed a law that required people seeking Medicaid to prove citizenship?
Some of you may favor this approach (I don't) but I think we'd agree that a law shouldn't cost more money than it saves.
Here's another example of GOP incompetence:
New federal rules requiring proof of U.S. citizenship for Medicaid coverage will save Colorado $300,000, but cost $2.9 million to implement, according to state estimates.
The state Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which administers Medicaid, has asked for an additional $2.8 million in the coming year to help counties cover most of the additional cost.
The state estimates that the new rules will result in 200 people losing Medicaid coverage in 2007 - and about 170 of them would be children.
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The department's estimate of the cost to do that is based on an average of five additional minutes for a county employee to process Medicaid applications.***
Medicaid is a joint federal and state program to provide health coverage for the disabled, elderly and very poor.
Okay, so the Repubs forgot to do a basic cost-benefit analysis, and it's a double whammy.
Nope, make that a triple whammy:
Arenales said the greater concern is people - such as the homeless - who are eligible for Medicaid but cannot get the documents to prove it.
Esgar said county officials worry about that too.
"Definitely, people are concerned that the barriers are preventing some people who would otherwise be eligible from getting benefits," Esgar said.
Cohen Ross said it is difficult to guess how many fall into that category.
"Those people still exist, those people still get sick, and they still seek care," she said.
Medicaid may not pay for that care, but someone will have to, she said.
The Repub's efficiency at being incompetent is staggering.
Lord no, no one can go after the real culprits and causes of illegal immigration, here illegal cheap labor employers and there massive corruption and denial of opportunity, no creation of a middle class, NAFTA, CAFTA-DR and so on.
"How does it make sense to spend millions of dollars to keep an estimated 200 people, most of them children, off of Medicaid?" said Elisabeth Arenales, an attorney with the Colorado Center on Law and Policy - a nonprofit advocacy group.
My job experience is with schizophrenia/bipolar meds. Many people with these conditions can't get insurance because they can't get a job. They end up disabled, and even homeless. Under the new (2005) Medicaid rules, one good thing is it expanded disability coverage. They get meds, get better, get back to work, and pay taxes. It can pay for itself. If you require a homeless family to produce documentation to get the meds the family head needs, and they can't produce it, the whole family is back out on the street.
Republicans never did promise to pay the electric bill for those thousand points of light.
A lot of this cost may be software changes.
Keep in mind beneficiaries already have to show their W-2, so they are taxpayers working in the US.
Also, keep in mind all patients will have to show citizenship or else they get kicked out of the hospital. This means the 90 year old woman who is an Alzeimer's patient in a care facility, an employee injured on the job, a child in a homeless family needing a check up to enter school.
Massachusetts is struggling, and a state spokesman noted: "So we've got people in nursing homes, people in the [state Department of Mental Retardation] institutions, we've got the homeless, we've got the . . . mentally ill who now will have to come up with some verification to prove that they're citizens," said Victoria Pulos, health law attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. "It's ironic that this is happening in the state where part of the health reform plan is to make sure that everyone who's eligible for Medicaid is enrolled."
Can the infant then just assumed to be eligible for Medicaid based on a U.S. birth certificate?
We should talk sometime. Send me an e-mail to say hi -- my usual computer is in the shop and I failed to transfer my contacts list.
Cross your fingers she doesn't need a transfusion. And the child doesn't need treatment for liver failure as many do the first week.