blocking Medicaid access, death at the doorstep

Oh that tricky Bush administration. They say clean air when they mean more pollution. They say No Child Left Behind when they mean No Upperclass Child Left Behind. They call it a Patriot Act, when it is in fact the KGB Surveillance for Dummies Act.

Now, they've gone and done it again. They've said they wanted to reform Medicaid so that those sneaky /brown/ people would quit "stealing" YOUR health care. They're the enemy you know, those /brown/ people, with their jobs and their families and their kids and their churches. But, what they really meant to say was that those sneaky /poor/ people were stealing THEIR tax breaks by using Medicaid.

That just won't do in the modern Republican Aristocracy. So, off with their benefits!!!

crossposted at Kos.

The New York Times today reports that Medicaid enrollment is down, way down, because of the Bush administration's new rules for signing up...actually, that should be "new roadblocks to signing up".

“The largest adverse effect of this policy has been on people who are American citizens,” said Kevin W. Concannon, director of the Department of Human Services in Iowa, where the number of Medicaid recipients dropped by 5,700 in the second half of 2006, to 92,880, after rising for five years. “We have not turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid in Waterloo, Dubuque or anywhere else in Iowa,” Mr. Concannon said.

Hmmm....Iowa, if only there were some reason for Democrats to hone in on this issue in IOWA. Hmmm......

Jeff Nelligan, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the new rule was “intended to ensure that Medicaid beneficiaries are citizens without imposing undue burdens on them” or on states. “We are not aware of any data that shows there are significant barriers to enrollment,” he said. “But if states are experiencing difficulties, they should bring them to our attention.”

That wording sounds to familiar....but, I can't quite place why.

Brown: Paula, the federal government did not even know about the convention center people until today.

Ah, right.

In Florida, the number of children on Medicaid declined by 63,000, to 1.2 million, from July 2006 to January of this year.

“We’ve seen an increase in the number of people who don’t qualify for Medicaid because they cannot produce proof of citizenship,"
...
Since Ohio began enforcing the document requirement in September, the number of children and parents on Medicaid has declined by 39,000, to 1.3 million, and state officials attribute most of the decline to the new requirement.
....
Moreover, they say, they have not seen a decline in enrollment among people who are exempt from the documentation requirement — for example, people who have qualified for Medicare and are also eligible for Medicaid.

Wisconsin keeps detailed records listing reasons for the denial or termination of benefits. “From August 2006 to February of this year, we terminated benefits for an average of 868 people a month for failure to document citizenship or identity,” said James D. Jones, the eligibility director of the Medicaid program in Wisconsin. “More than 600 of those actions were for failure to prove identity.” In the same period, Mr. Jones said, the state denied an average of 1,758 applications a month for failure to document citizenship or identity.

But, they aren't aware of those brown poor people that are being refused benefits. Because, well, in reality, they were all at the Convention Center getting one if not two meals a day anyhow.

Well, what can you say. At least not having health insurance has no negative benefits for our children.

WASHINGTON — Hospitalized children who lack health insurance are twice as likely to die from their injuries as those with insurance, a new study reports.

Yeah, but you'll notice, those are brown POOR kids. Not OUR kids. What do you think this is, a Democracy?