Medicaid

Today's Tribune has an excellent series of articles on Medicaid. This is an enormously important issue -- that I predict will present the toughest choices states have faced in a long time (even including the tough choices states had to make in the recent downturn to balance their budgets). The articles refer to the difficult choices, who receives Medicaid, questions and answers, possible fixes, a family on Medicaid, and an individual on Medicaid.

If the federal government gets even semi-serious about balancing its budget, it will need to look hard at Medicaid. Constituencies for programs (recipients and providers) will look to the states to make up any difference created by federal cuts. That will make for difficult choices. This year, for example, there are charges that the 5.6% increase to public education funding ($143.2 million) is inadequate (an "insult," as the educators' union president told me). Funding for Health and Human Services (mostly Medicaid funding), though, was increased 7.3% ($159 million) this year.

No doubt, if the legislature does not pony up the money to retain any Medicaid benefits cut by the feds, we will be called heartless. To the extent we do spend the money to cover those benefits, we will be accused of stealing that money from education. Though these decisions seem simple in isolation, it is helpful to have my constituents understand that they are fairly complex and that one part of the budget affects others. And that is a reason I love this blog.