State Budgets and Medicaid

Posted on November 22, 2010 by townsend

• Some states weigh unthinkable option: ending Medicaid, By Janet Adamy and Neil King Jr., November 22, 2010, Wall Street Journal: “Huge budget shortfalls are prompting a handful of states to begin discussing a once-unthinkable scenario: dropping out of the Medicaid insurance program for the poor. Elected and appointed officials in nearly a half-dozen states, including Washington, Texas and South Carolina, have publicly thrown out the idea. Wyoming and Nevada this year produced detailed studies of what would happen should they withdraw from the program. Wyoming found that Medicaid accounts for 63% of the state’s nursing-home revenue. The idea of abandoning Medicaid as a solution is so extreme that even proponents don’t expect any state will follow through, but officials are floating the discussions because dire budgetary pressures have forced them to at least look at even the most drastic options…”
• Cuts to Medicaid threaten real pain, By Kathie Durbin, November 21, 2010, The Columbian: “Debb Snyder’s slender lifeline to independent living is her government-paid prescription for Klonopin, the expensive anti-seizure drug that controls her grand mal seizures and allows her to remain in her small apartment off St. Johns Road. She’s been taking 0.5 grams of the drug six times daily for 20 years. That’s why it was intensely personal for Snyder when she saw the list of cuts to Medicaid programs the Washington Department of Social and Health Services is preparing to implement between Jan. 1 and March 1 to achieve its share of 6.27 percent across-the-board cuts in state agency budgets. The department will eliminate coverage for outpatient prescription drugs provided by retail pharmacies to an estimated 277,000 clients, effective March 1. As a ‘discretionary’ program under Medicaid, the prescription drug program is one the state has the option to discontinue while still maintaining its partnership with the federal government in providing health coverage to the poorest of the poor under Medicaid…”