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Budget Woes
Author: TriSec    Date: 08/15/2009 12:00:17

Good Morning.

Everyone should have a budget. At it's simplest and most basic...you spend less than you earn, and save a little for a rainy day. Why is this such a hard concept for governments to master?

We surely don't need to talk about the Fed; every Tuesday I post a link to the biggest sucking sound in the entire Federal budget, the ongoing cost of war.

But it's all the liberal's fault, right? After all, we're the party of tax and spend, and now President Obama's healthcare plan is going to push us into the deficit stratosphere, right?

If you haven't seen the remarkable chart posted in yesterday's blog, I'll give you a minute to go look it up now.

So now...City, State, and Federal programs are facing cuts just to keep the economy from falling apart as we try to figure a way out of this mess. The Bush economic policies just keep on ripping money out of the hands of 97% of the population in order to support the remaining 3%....the ones that don't need it at all.

It's part of our national wherewithall; during WWII, taxes on the richest segment of the population approached 90% of their income....but 70 years ago we decided as a nation that it was important to defeat global fascism. Now I guess it's important to us as a nation to make the rich richer, and to sellout everyone else so an elite subset of Americans can maintain their hold on power.

There are more and more stories in the news everyday about what this is doing to ordinary people, and indeed those who depend on the system and the assistance that all those social programs do. Here is one of those stories.




A friendly girl with almond-shaped eyes and a soft smile, Jessica Fiasconaro loves to belt out songs on her karaoke machine, and she once played Gabriella in a production of “High School Musical.’’ But when some of her peers look at her, all they see is her wheelchair.

Jessica has cerebral palsy, and while she has made her way through Bourne Middle School with all the aplomb an 11-year-old can muster, it has not been easy.

“I don’t know,’’ she said. “I’m just different from the other kids.’’

Last winter, when her Sagamore Beach family discovered a state-run institution that provides free care and education to children like her, her world opened up, until she was told she could not be admitted because of a state budget cut. She was placed on a waiting list.

Jessica’s story is but one example of how budget cuts are quietly rippling across the state, hurting families such as hers in profound ways. Many aspects of this year’s budget battle made headlines: the clash over the zoo funding, the fate of health care for legal immigrants, the rancor over the increase in the sales tax. But across Massachusetts, there are deeply personal stories like this one that make clear the gravity of the fiscal crisis.

The Massachusetts Hospital School in Canton was critically affected by its $491,000 budget cut. It had to fire 13 staff members, close a residential ward, and temporarily freeze admissions earlier this summer.

“We’ve been hunting for years, and this was the best place we saw,’’ said Jessica’s grandmother, Marie Cheney. “She’s desperately in need of their services.’’

Jessica’s mother, Elizabeth Cheney, a single mother who works as a house cleaner and has developed back problems from lifting her daughter, said she believed that the Hospital School would give Jessica the care she deserves.

And Jessica said the school would be a better place for her.

“I would have kids that are like me,’’ she said. “And it’s accessible, and I wouldn’t feel different or left out.’’

Because the Hospital School is a chronic care facility, the admission process is slow, but 12 to 15 patients are typically accepted each year, said Katherine A. Chmiel, the Hospital School’s chief executive officer. The school serves 75 residential and 24 day patients between the ages of 7 and 22.

Marie Cheney said her family was told there were 33 children on the waiting list.

Chmiel could not confirm that number, but she said the list reflects an increasing number of needy families, not just the budget cut.

Admissions are no longer frozen, Chmiel said, but she added that the Hospital School must work on a one-patient-out, one-patient-in basis to avoid discharging anyone prematurely and that it is unlikely new patients will start at the Hospital School this September.

Continued...


But there's more. I attended a Healthcare Rally this past Tuesday, as President Obama visited Portsmouth, NH for a town hall meeting. It's more urgent than ever, even in this "RomneyCare" state. Everyone is pointing to us as a model, but remember the only real change is that the law *requires* us to have health insurance, and provides a tax penalty if we don't produce a voucher from our carrier every year. There is a statewide clearinghouse, but the kind of plans that normal people can afford have ridiculously high copays and deductibles....and cover far less than the average employer-based healthcare plan.

But all this matters not a whit to 30,000 immigrants in this state who are about to lose their coverage.


Thirty thousand legal immigrants have begun receiving letters informing them that their state-subsidized health insurance is ending Aug. 31 and will be replaced by a patchwork system of care until Massachusetts officials can piece together a more comprehensive plan for the most critically ill.

“We know that this may be a hard time for you,’’ states an accompanying note from Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, secretary of Health and Human Services. “We are committed to finding some way of covering at least some of the costs of your medical needs.’’

Left unanswered is what sort of coverage this group will receive and ultimately what it will cost taxpayers.

The state’s interim plan only covers emergencies and other limited services, leaving advocates worried about the welfare of these immigrants. Under the plan, immigrants will be receiving emergency care in hospitals and a limited number of other services through community centers under two state programs, the Health Safety Net and MassHealth Limited.

It is unlikely that they will be able to continue receiving coverage for routine or preventive care from their current doctors.

Advocates working with the administration said yesterday that state officials are concentrating on a longer-term plan that will use available funds to provide care for those who are the most seriously ill with cancer and chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

“Other people who need treatment or need to be diagnosed or get tests, we don’t know what type of coverage they may be able to have,’’ said Eva A. Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.

The federal government does not help pay for treating these 30,000 “special status’’ immigrants, typically people who have been here less than five years and are not yet citizens, and thus they are more expensive for the state to insure. Many states have dropped coverage for this class of immigrants, but until now, Massachusetts had continued to provide comprehensive care.

Facing huge budget gaps, lawmakers and Governor Deval Patrick’s administration battled much of the spring over coverage for immigrants, with Patrick insisting that these tax-paying residents were entitled to full care. Last month, the Legislature approved $40 million for immigrants’ care, $90 million less than the governor requested in his original proposal. The administration then said that $40 million was not “sufficient to maintain meaningful coverage or to develop a scaled-back program.’’


As for me...I've been on COBRA since February 17, and with all the job-shuffling I've done this year, I'll still be without 'normal' employer-supplied insurance until December 1. All I can say is thank God for ARRA; the President is paying 2/3 of my healthcare costs this year, and I think we'll just make it before my benefit runs out.

With universal healthcare, this wouldn't have been a worry.


 

9 comments (Latest Comment: 08/16/2009 13:12:31 by Scoopster)
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