Health Coverage for the Poor

Posted on April 12, 2011 by townsend

• GOP governors say they have a recipe for recovery, By Noam N. Levey, April 12, 2011, Los Angeles Times: “In their drive to cut medical assistance to the poor while pushing tax breaks benefiting the affluent, congressional Republicans are following the lead of a group of governors who have championed this approach to balance state budgets. The strategy – reprising the supply-side economics of the Ronald Reagan era – has caught on with conservatives who say that lowering taxes for corporations and wealthy taxpayers will boost state economies. But the moves are sparking a debate in capitols from Arizona to Wisconsin to Maine over who is being asked to sacrifice and whether the strategy will produce more jobs…”
• Lawsuit filed over Basic Health cuts to poor people, By Vanessa Ho, April 8, 2011, Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “A potential class-action lawsuit has been filed against Washington over budget cuts to Basic Health, a month after the state booted 17,000 people off the subsidized health-care program to save money. In reducing its rolls, the Health Care Authority deemed certain categories of people as ineligible, including kids, seniors, undocumented U.S. residents and people who made too much money. Also disqualified were legal immigrants who hadn’t lived in the country for at least five years. The complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle, accuses the state of violating the Constitution’s ‘Equal Protection Clause,’ by disqualifying some legal immigrants, while still serving other legal immigrants and citizens…”