As Florida grips for possible damage to its populace from Hurricane Wilma (we’re running out of letters…) what had been the strongest hurricane ever measured in the Atlantic… just giving an exclamation point to this year’s disasters… its poor and elderly population should gear up for another kind of disaster, of the governmentally created kind: a massive medicaid “reform” that both proponents and detractors call “a radical change”.
Near as I can tell, this measure, proposed and enacted in a state where the President’s brother is governor, and since JEB Bush will almost certainly be the GOP nominee in 2008 (barring liberal fantasies of Cheney’s resignation followed by Condi Rice named as veep followed by Bush’s resignation… something about the Prez and Veep acting as accessories after the fact to treason…)… we can expect a similar program to be proposed on a national scale by President John Edward “JEB” Bush after he takes office in January 2009.
What this amounts to is the ability to shunt medicaid patients to private insurers, who can then set annual and life-time limits on treatment they (the insurer) will pay for… the precise opposite of social insurance. Estimates are 5% of the medicaid population should hit the annual limit each year; what happens to them is… a mystery (most likely they will become a “charity burden” on hospitals and health-care-related philanthropies… which, of course, will also be pressured by the increasing presence of profit-making insurers administering a government funded program). Anyone exceeding their annual cap should have considered that before getting sick, now shouldn’t they?
But the State of Florida, which has no income tax, and thanks to repeal of that awful death tax on estates of multi-millionaires, has rapidly declining revenues from that source, has a huge incentive to cut costs, damn the consequences. This is precisely the same pressure that will be felt at the federal level, as soon as everyone realizes just how important a component of it is medicaid (around 10%, give or take, of the budget, as is, give or take, the medicare program).
This is what compassionate conservatism is all about, boys and girls. Prosperity with a purpose and all that.
tdog
So TD, when do you think this return to Victorian times will end? Are you surprised that unions, pensions and health care mean so little now?
TD- why you write such stuff as this: we can expect a similar program to be proposed on a national scale by President John Edward “JEB” Bush after he takes office in January 2009.
Eeet makes me soo depressing that I might have to go jump out of the feesh pond onto the beach.
I suspect that if Fitzmas is half as damaging as the assorted Kossacks and everyone else in Left Blogtopia (y!sctp!) seems to think, it will be a long time before another member of the West Texas Lucky Sperm Club is installed in the People’s House, if ever.
You can only have so many years of lying, cheating and stealing before even the doltiest American catches on to the fact they’ve been screwed and weren’t even offered a post-coital smoke. Bush in ’08? Maybe, but he’ll only win if Hillary is the Democratic choice (that would seriously mobilize the Wingnuts…Hillary and the Patriot Act would induce republican angina nationwide) not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with Hillary, but do we need a lightning rod after eight years of inclement political weather?