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Gov. Bob McDonnell has resisted expanding
Medicaid in Virginia, despite decisions by GOP governors in six states,
including, most recently, Michigan and Ohio, to expand their programs. However,
The Virginia Senate has cleared the way for the state to expand its Medicaid
program to hundreds of thousands of uninsured Virginians, but the House of
Delegates stands firmly in the path. On
a voice vote, the Senate approved a budget amendment that would allow
Virginia to expand Medicaid on Jan. 1 if the state is able to make significant
reforms in how it delivers and pays for health care under the program.
Virginians should oppose any legislation that will expand Medicaid coverage in the
Commonwealth and support the Federal government’s expansion of medical
healthcare exchanges. Proponent’s
arguments are the moral equivalent of “dangling a stick in front of a
donkey, and beating him with a carrot” in order to encourage him to move.
The carrot is the federal government’s promise to provide
$23B over nine years to expand Medicaid in Virginia. The stick is Virginia must opt into the federal
health care exchanges. According to the
Richmond Times Dispatch (http://bit.ly/XsLGLR),
opting in will ostensibly expand Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of people,
while providing politicians with a politically expedient path to balance the
budget by “saving” $51 million next year and $114 million the following year.
Unfortunately, the facts are these. The United States government borrows
forty-six cents on every dollar it spends: it is broke. There is no guarantee that $23B will be
there over nine years. Second, as
humanitarian as expanding the program seems, it only provides access to health
care: it does not create one new doctor.
Neither benefit will be realized, and the citizens of the Commonwealth
will be left with hundreds of thousands of more dependent people, relying on a
broken health care system, and no way to pay for it.It's time to take our medicine and deal with these issues on a state level and not a federal level.
