These Two States Cut Medicaid…And Saved Money

Townhall.com ^ | November 29, 2014 | Matt Vespa

[Lurker]

“We assume social insurance is good for the welfare of society”

You assume wrongly.

[Smokin' Joe]

Exactly. If I am forced to do something at gunpoint (or the threat thereof), it just isn't the same as giving out of the goodness of my heart.

[Straight Vermonter]

I’ve made the point often just by expanding Medicaid, we could have fixed the uninsured crisis in this country without inconveniencing the 95% that was always insured.

That is in fact what was done. Nearly 2/3 of those who have signed up for Obamacare actually will be insured through medicaid not through a private insurer.

Medicare/medicaid is a big reason why healthcare is so screwed up in the US in the first place. These programs pay ~50% of the cost of service so the other 50% gets cost shifted onto the bills of privately insured patients. If a small percentage of patients were on medicare/medicaid then this would be tolerable. There are, however, ~110 million people on these programs. That amount of cost shifting has utterly broken the system.

[Chewbarkah]

I am all for administrative reform and accountable government, but doubt the possibility of same because the scope of the US government exceeds practical control. Neither the White House nor Congress controls or even knows what goes on in detail or comprehensively. I suspect we fundamentally disagree on what “government” should be doing. Our enormous entitlement programs are indeed what has us trillions in debt (along with defense spending to a lesser extent) — not the subset of these costs that are siphoned off by cheats or squandered on incompetent bureaucrats and admin. Waste, fraud, etc., flourish in a million places, with entrenched constituencies, because government’s reach exceeds its grasp. Reform is a very tall order under current circumstances (and we’ve seen reformist efforts come and go long before things were this bad). But it’s a worthy goal, and I wish you all the best in the endeavor.

[usconservative]

And the Illinois audit found that more than 8,000 dead people were still on the state’s Medicaid rolls.

BUT THEY'RE STILL VOTING!!!

Ok, seriously I live in this craphole called Illinois. To say I'm surprised to learn that the state in which I live, unarguably the most corrupt state in the entire country, actually did something about waste and fraud in this state just blows my mind.

I hope incoming Republican Governor Bruce Rauner looks at this and mimics its success across every government program in this state.

I've been calling for a forensic audit of the Illinois State Budget for over a decade now. Will it finally happen with evidence like this coming to the fore?

One can only hope!