In twenty years the privateers hope they no longer function as the working, efficient programs medicaid/medicare were. When Ryan's new roadmap for Wisconsin is rolled out.....it will be medicare that will be switched over to a voucher system that over time will not purchase very much from the private industry.... Medicare will be switched into a block grant. Once that move is secured it will block coverage to those who have lost insurance via job loss... In fact the program funded by the block grant will only cover what ever the state is given... After these moves are secured then the real trip using Ryan's roadmap begins.... It will be a bumpy trip for those not fortunate enough to have had their granddaddy set them up with the comforts that he surely begrudges others.... In fact that seems to be the calling card of many of those crying budget emergencies, and then turning our govt. into a private trough for the corporate pigs....
"Right now, Medicaid is an entitlement program. That means the federal government, in partnership with the states, must enroll everybody who meets the program’s guidelines. In other words, if millions of additional people become eligible because, say, they lost their job-based insurance in the recession, than the feds and the states have to provide them with coverage and find some way to pay for it. And it can’t be spotty coverage, either. By law, Medicaid coverage must be comprehensive.
At least, that’s the way it works now. If the law changes and Medicaid becomes a block grant, then every year the federal government would simply give the states a lump sum, set by a fixed formula, and let the states make the most of it. Conservatives claim block grants would give states the flexibility they need to make their programs more efficient. But, as Harold Pollack has noted in these pages, states already have some flexibility. And because demand for Medicaid tends to peak during economic downturns, when state tax revenues fall, the likely impact of a block grant scheme would be to make Medicaid even less affordable at the time it is most necessary.
Though Medicaid is seen as a program for the poor, most of all Medicaid spending comes from the elderly and people with disabilities. The elderly are 10% of the enrollees and take up 25% of the benefits; the disabled are 15% of the enrollees and take up 42% of the benefits. That’s specifically who you would hurt with this proposal. States would unquestionably limit enrollment under a block grant scheme; not even Newt Gingrich could deny that. That’s millions more people without health insurance, on top of the 15 million denied coverage because of killing the coverage expansion."
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/04/03/ryan-budget-will-block-grant-medicaid-voucherize-medicare/#comments
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