The Joplin Globe published an editorial on Thursday that attempted to reveal some of the ideas of our “Republican House leadership” on the issue of pending health care reform legislation and its effects on Missouri.
However, the editorial succeeded only in revealing the idea that our Republican “leadership” is contemplating “opting out” of the Medicaid program.
The editorial began by citing Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder’s wild-guess assessment that health care reform could cost Missourians an additional $450 million a year, then asked Republican members of the Missouri House who attended the Globe’s editorial board meeting if they agreed with that assessment. “The answers were startling,” according to the editorial.
Startling is right.
Among the more startling was the following:
“The board was also told that Medicaid is a voluntary program for states and the federal government to ‘share’ costs of health care for the low-income. States have the option to not participate. It was suggested that if federal health care requirements for additional state funding reached unmanageable levels, the state would have to consider ‘opting out’ of Medicaid.”
The editorial did not reveal just who made the “suggestion” that opting out of Medicaid was a possibility, nor did the paper indicate that abandoning Medicaid was a consensus view of those legislators present. The Globe needs to report to us the details of the discussion between the editorial board and the legislators who attended the meeting, particularly the details surrounding the fear mongering related to the Medicaid program.
Since Lt. Gov. Kinder has already suggested that closing prisons and universities were among the possible Republican responses to health care reform legislation, I suppose it’s not so far-fetched to imagine Republicans would now threaten to punish people on Medicaid.
But we at least should know who it was that brought it up, and exactly under what circumstances it might become a reality.
And the Globe has the responsibility to find out and then inform its readers.
Duane Graham
Joplin
