General Discussion

kentuck

(111,079 posts) Mon Jul 28, 2014, 08:49 PM Jul 2014

Paul Ryan's Worst Idea

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/paul-ryan-still-paul-ryan.html

<snip>
Ryan’s worst proposal is to convert numerous anti-poverty programs from defined benefit levels for beneficiaries to chunks of money for states to use as they see fit. Ryan promises that the money could only be spent on the poor, but Bob Greenstein — who has spent a career studying the issue — explains how the promise is impossible; states would use the funds to replace other funding on the poor, which in turn would be redirected toward non-poverty spending.

The idea of letting states decide how to spend federal anti-poverty money has long divided the parties. Republicans assume that states will act in the best interest of their poorest citizens. Democrats assume the opposite. The trouble for Ryan is that, over the last few years, the United States has conducted a vast experiment that has proven his assumption wrong in the most horrifying way possible. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts allowed states to opt out of accepting Medicaid money to give health insurance to their poorest citizens. The money is, essentially, free. Washington would pay 90 percent of the cost of enrolling a person in Medicaid, and the remaining 10 percent would be made up, or more than made up, by the reduced cost of sick uninsured people showing up at the emergency room. In a display of almost fanatical indifference to the well-being of their most vulnerable citizens, nearly every Republican-controlled state government has eschewed this free money. Not only have state-level Republicans failed to display deep concern for the poor, they seem to actually enjoy subjecting them to intense physical and financial distress.

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