GOP's Kinder, Gentler Medicaid Gutting

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/medicaid-cuts-repeal-republicans

After first placing Paul Ryan's drastic Medicaid-slashing proposal on the negotiating table, Republicans are lining up behind a yet another plan to curb the program's benefits and payments—a smaller-scale change that's likelier to pass Congress. Republicans in both houses introduced bills on Tuesday that would eliminate federal regulations that prevent states from trimming their Medicaid rolls or erecting new barriers to enrollment.

In February, Mother Jones broke the news that Republicans planned to target these so-called Maintenance of Effort (MOE) requirements, which the federal government put in place after giving states a new injection of Medicaid money in 2009. Now they've made good on their promise. The State Flexibility Act—sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in the Senate and Reps. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (D-Wash.) in the House—would give states significantly more leeway in kicking beneficiaries to the curb, reducing payment to nursing homes, and making other reductions to shrink budget gaps.

"Take the handcuffs off the governors," Gingrey (R-Ga.) said at the bill's unveiling on Tuesday, arguing that current law prevents the states from "ferreting out waste, fraud, and abuse, finding out if someone's falsified information on income…maybe even if they're illegal immigrants." The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill would save $2.8 billion over five years.

The State Flexibility Act would not go as far as the Ryan plan, which proposes a massive overhaul of the Medicaid funding structure. But it would allow states to take a knife, if not a hatchet, to the program. Gingrey said that only 300,000 beneficiaries would be eliminated from the program under the bill, but he and his colleagues admitted that they didn't have an independent CBO estimate to confirm the number.

More at the link --

:argh:

billions by dropping all welfare to people without children then gave away all that money to corporations who then used it to lay off and out source industrial jobs. So today with high unemployment those people who need a safety net get medicaid and food stamps but can't get a home or end up free loading off family and friends. Leave it to R's to kick folks while they're down, btw, I was one of those who did try to move to a job state only to find out by the time I got their all the jobs had been taken and all one could find was part time low wage jobs that paid less then welfare, 79/80.

If anyone who would have bothered to fact check Reagan when he said pack up and move to another state they would have learned that Reagan left out a lot of historical facts about the years 1930 until 1940. First thing he left out was what happened to me, people got there and all the jobs that had been hiring were filled. Another fact was things got so bad that California stopped people at the border and turned away a lot of people from entering the state unless they had cash in their pocket.

Another fact because of the excess of workers wages decreased, remember these were the years before unions so it was up to the employers dictated how much a persons labor was worth and there were enough workers who ended up cutting their own throats by accepting wages lower then the next guy would take. Reagan painted a nice rosy picture that even 30 years later R's still repeat it and never bother to check fact vs myths of a deranged man.

edited to fix a but to a by