Arizona Drops Children’s Health Program

[kpete]

Source: New York Times

Arizona Drops Children’s Health Program
By KEVIN SACK
Published: March 18, 2010

Arizona on Thursday became the first state to eliminate its Children’s Health Insurance Program when Gov. Jan Brewer signed an austere budget that will leave nearly 47,000 low-income children without coverage.

The Arizona budget is a vivid reflection of how the fiscal crisis afflicting state governments is cutting deeply into health care. The state also will roll back Medicaid coverage for childless adults in a move that is expected to eventually drop 310,000 people from the rolls.

State leaders said they were left with few choices because of a $2.6 billion projected shortfall next year. But hospital officials and advocates for low-income people said they were worried that emergency rooms would be overrun by patients who had few other options for care, and that children might suffer enduring developmental problems because of inadequate medical attention.

The cuts also mean the state will forgo hundreds of millions of dollars in federal matching aid, and could lose far more if Congress passes a health bill that requires states to maintain eligibility levels for the two programs.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/health/policy/19arizona.html?scp=1&sq=arizona%20children%27s&st=cse

[Deep13]

1. Get a job you damn child freeloaders!

What a stupid, stupid, heartless thing to do. :-(

[Joanne98]

2. Here's her contact page!

http://www.azgovernor.gov/Contact.asp

[momrois]

8. Yikes!

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. So that's the plan.

Congress is hyping that the new HCR bill will immediately go into effect for children's coverage.
And now states can eliminate the programs.

Disaster Capitalism strikes again.

[icee]

12. If you keep thinking in this direction, you'll understand what's

about to happen to many entitlement programs.

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. Yep..I am on that train of thought.

I have been reading about how other countries have been hollowed out, their education and health services destroyed, their income streams ruined, their resources and manufacturing privatized by being sold to
overseas companies ( think Argentina for recent example) and their money devalued.
That is happening here.
All the mass firings of teachers, the closing of whole school districts, the emergence of for profit charter schools,
the destruction of public health care facilities.
Most recent example:
(Vanguard Health intends to acquire The Detroit Medical Center, the Motor City’s largest nonprofit health system.)

I guess when a nation falls, people expect incidental music, like in the movies.

[icee]

20. And I'll bet you know the name of the person who will be leading

these efforts. The Mark.

[BlueIris]

23. Yep.

It's ick worthy, isn't it.

[old mark]

4. PA has a program that came out of CHIPS for uninsured adults

under a certaion income level who can not get private insurance. The monthly rate increased on March 1 from $234 to $600, and will increase in July to $629. This was with less than 1 months notice of any rate increase, and many many people had to drop their only health insurance coverage. They said there were "too many people" on the program....

mark

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. Brewer's a neo - con type, isn't she?

Didn't she write favorably about Ayn Rand earlier in her career?

[Soylent Brice]

7. neo-con type doesn't begin to cover it. she's a fucking nightmare.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. my condolences if you reside there.

[Soylent Brice]

14. used to. i can imagine their suffering out there.

[KamaAina]

19. Thanks, Janet Napolitano!

:sarcasm:

[bergie321]

13. Who knows

She does not have a college degree. She is a certified X-Ray tech though...

GO ARIZONA!

[pattmarty]

15. I ain't bustin' on you, but ANYONE that is an Ayn Rand fan is either............

...........really, really stupid or has a severe mental disorder (I didn't want to say retarded). you have to be high on amphetamines to refer to that bitch.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

17. I read that stuff in my yute, and even then, it bothered me.

[mopinko]

6. this is why a lot of people didn't like the idea of single payer.

if we had had it during the bush years, don't you think they would have gutted it?

[John Q. Citizen]

21. Not if everyone has the same single payer and the same coverage. That's the key to maintaining

quality.

Unless you think bush would have cut his own care.


The current bill we have (almost) will be far worse when the funding gets cut for the next decade out.

What happens if an insurer or if multiple insurers on the exchange go belly up? Too big to fail?


And after cutting out the waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, how will it be paid for over the next ten years?

[Love Bug]

10. "And all the pro-lifers in the state rose up in protest and stormed the capitol!"

*crickets*

You mean they didn't?

:sarcasm:

[Kali]

11. fuck - that was a really good program

and another fuck, "a move that is expected to eventually drop 310,000 people from the rolls."

husband facing some possibly serious health issues, I am dreading facing the application process for ahcccs - which itself was once touted as a model for state handling of medicaid.

[4lbs]

18. Yeah, it makes sense to force them to go to emergency rooms for care.

Instead of normal routine care that would be several hundred dollars per visit at most, force them to go to emergency rooms where it can cost $1000 or more per visit for the same routine care.

Yeah, that's a terrific way to 'save' money. :sarcasm:

[DBoon]

22. Is there a racial element to this?

I would expect that proportionately more families with children covered by this would be Hispanic.

Is this behind the scenes?

[nightrain]

24. knr. I appreciate the information. A sad example of the state-

supported financial crisis. And the bill is to add more people to Medicaid? I guess they'll get the tongue depressor and an aspirin and not much else, oh, maybe a latex free glove for the rectal exam, forget the KY, can't afford it.

Bunch of idiots in Congress.

[saracat]

25. So maybe now some will believe me when I tell them AZ will opt out of any HCR?

and understand why there is soo much anger that the AZ Democratic Party let this happened without even trying to help elect Dem legislators?