One of the more astonishing proposals of the Governor’s budget cuts was a “10 appointment maximum” for Medi-Cal patients.
In an effort to close the state budget gap, California health officials are proposing a “hard cap” of 10 medical visits per year for needy patients who rely on the Medi-Cal program for health care.
Some patients and health advocates are calling the strategy a “death sentence” for patients who need dialysis treatments to clean their blood or chemotherapy to rid them of cancer. The bipartisan(sic) Legislative Analyst’s Office recommended a cap that also grants exemptions for certain services or conditions.
The 10-visit cap (PDF), estimated to save the state $200 million a year, would affect the 10 percent of California patients who rely most heavily on the Medi-Cal program to meet their medical needs. (California Watch)
In many ways, this cap is just as scary as the non-existant “death panels” from the health care debate. This ten-visit cap would mean death for those that are easily treated through consistent, but expensive, care.
This cut is simplistic, and not really reflective of a more thoughtful approach of tightly managing care for the most expensive patients. As of yet, nobody has acted on the Leg Analyst’s suggestion, but one hopes that is something of a given. A harsh 10-appointment cap is simply unacceptable.
We are still waiting to see how the legislature acts on Brown’s proposal, but I would be pretty shocked if this particular one got too far.
At any rate, why aren’t we seeing Tea Party fury on this? Oh, right, this is poor people, so it’s not that big of a deal.
There will be fury on this from many groups. Since it is so arbitrary, and dangerous, I wonder if it wasn’t intended to stir outrage and publicity–and from there arguments on why continuing taxes are better than killing poor people.
Ending pension spiking and retroactive hikes I think a lot of people can get behind. Cutting life-saving medical care will be a tougher sell. At least I hope it will. If not, I wonder where our moral values are as a society.
because you don’t turn your back on your enemies, whereas you think your friends/allies have your back right until the moment they stab you in it. Jerry will do damage Arnold could only dream of, because party ties and money will cause some of the Dems to hold their fire.
Part of the problem is that the people who would be hurt are poor, and they don’t vote as a bloc. It isn’t the voters’ kids who will be hurt with this proposal. There used to be an organization that registered these folks to vote — oh, right, Acorn. The one betrayed by the Democratic congress and president when the right targeted them. Defunded and destroyed, though they broke no laws.
All this grief because the public is still buying into the Rethuglican meme: taxes are bad. In a sense, they’re right. Private industry has sucked up workers’ productivity gains, stagnating wages for several decades, and many people really are tapped out. And the rich are just too powerful to remit some of their excessive gains in higher taxes.
Jerry Brown is not a fool. He saw that, in the same election that gave Democrats all statewide offices, California voters approved yet another initiative to require a 2/3 vote to raise “fees.” That’s why he promised that we’d get to vote on simply maintaining the current level of taxation a few years longer. We’re not going to get anything revolutionary out of this man, except maybe a new high in betraying traditional Democratic principles of governing.