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Medicaid recipients are forgotten in standoff
By Sid Salter
Those looking to define the current special session standoff between Gov. Haley Barbour's administration and House Speaker Billy McCoy and his supporters in terms of good guys and bad guys are going to be sorely disappointed.
The two main issues confronting Barbour and the lawmakers - erasing the current $90 million Medicaid deficit and reauthorizing the Mississippi Department of Employment Security - have devolved into partisan divisions that defy logic and reason.
Wrong on MDES
The argument over reauthorizing MDES is one that should never have developed. House members refused to reauthorize MDES because they were angered that the agency was spending money advertising on a talk radio network that has leveled withering criticisms at McCoy personally and that took a strong position against his re-election as speaker and the re-election of representatives who supported him.
The anger is understandable, but there are clearly better and more effective means of dealing with that issue than threatening both the unemployed and the state employees who serve their needs with a July 1 legislative sunset of the agency. The House is wrong.
But laying legislative siege to MDES neither lessened the criticism nor erected any obstacles to more criticism from the network in the future. What it did was give McCoy's talk radio critics yet another political stick with which to beat him over the head.
On the Medicaid issue, however, the political gamesmanship has become even more intense and even more ridiculous. Barbour is trying to ram a hospital tax formula down the throats of the House in a special session as the sole possible Medicaid deficit funding solution.
The House leadership wants a combination of increased tobacco and liquor taxes along with a less punitive hospital tax formula rather than the Barbour-backed hospital tax that Mississippi Hospital Association members have been politically coerced to support because Barbour has let them know he considers that the only Medicaid funding game in town.
Threat to Bryant
Barbour is now promising the hospitals immediate cuts in Medicaid hospital reimbursements if the House doesn't cave in and support his plan. But the House doesn't appear to be quaking and shaking much over those threats.
The Legislature as a body bears some long-term responsibility for historically and consistently authorizing a larger, more expansive Medicaid program than it provides stable funding to support. Barbour isn't the first governor to chafe under that fiscal dishonesty.
But in using the skewed logic that the Legislature can't vote on a tobacco tax hike until after his tax study commission makes its report in August, but that lawmakers must now enact the hospital tax prior to that agency's report exposes Barbour's stance for what it is - an exercise in Medicaid politics rather than Medicaid policy.
One thing's for certain - if Barbour makes Medicaid cuts in the current economic environment of $4-per-gallon gas and the rising food and fiber prices high energy costs bring with it, everyone loses.
Unless he is able to broker some meaningful compromise, the one player who incurs lasting damage to his political reputation is Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant. Medicaid is an issue that may well define whether Bryant or Barbour is really the leader of the state Senate.
Contact Perspective Editor Sid Salter at (601) 961-7084 or e-mail ssalter@clarionledger.com. Visit his blog at http://www.clarionledger.com
The two main issues confronting Barbour and the lawmakers - erasing the current $90 million Medicaid deficit and reauthorizing the Mississippi Department of Employment Security - have devolved into partisan divisions that defy logic and reason.
Wrong on MDES
The argument over reauthorizing MDES is one that should never have developed. House members refused to reauthorize MDES because they were angered that the agency was spending money advertising on a talk radio network that has leveled withering criticisms at McCoy personally and that took a strong position against his re-election as speaker and the re-election of representatives who supported him.
The anger is understandable, but there are clearly better and more effective means of dealing with that issue than threatening both the unemployed and the state employees who serve their needs with a July 1 legislative sunset of the agency. The House is wrong.
But laying legislative siege to MDES neither lessened the criticism nor erected any obstacles to more criticism from the network in the future. What it did was give McCoy's talk radio critics yet another political stick with which to beat him over the head.
On the Medicaid issue, however, the political gamesmanship has become even more intense and even more ridiculous. Barbour is trying to ram a hospital tax formula down the throats of the House in a special session as the sole possible Medicaid deficit funding solution.
The House leadership wants a combination of increased tobacco and liquor taxes along with a less punitive hospital tax formula rather than the Barbour-backed hospital tax that Mississippi Hospital Association members have been politically coerced to support because Barbour has let them know he considers that the only Medicaid funding game in town.
Threat to Bryant
Barbour is now promising the hospitals immediate cuts in Medicaid hospital reimbursements if the House doesn't cave in and support his plan. But the House doesn't appear to be quaking and shaking much over those threats.
The Legislature as a body bears some long-term responsibility for historically and consistently authorizing a larger, more expansive Medicaid program than it provides stable funding to support. Barbour isn't the first governor to chafe under that fiscal dishonesty.
But in using the skewed logic that the Legislature can't vote on a tobacco tax hike until after his tax study commission makes its report in August, but that lawmakers must now enact the hospital tax prior to that agency's report exposes Barbour's stance for what it is - an exercise in Medicaid politics rather than Medicaid policy.
One thing's for certain - if Barbour makes Medicaid cuts in the current economic environment of $4-per-gallon gas and the rising food and fiber prices high energy costs bring with it, everyone loses.
Unless he is able to broker some meaningful compromise, the one player who incurs lasting damage to his political reputation is Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant. Medicaid is an issue that may well define whether Bryant or Barbour is really the leader of the state Senate.
Contact Perspective Editor Sid Salter at (601) 961-7084 or e-mail ssalter@clarionledger.com. Visit his blog at http://www.clarionledger.com
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| Medicaid: Perennial shortfalls and reliant on one-time money | Bobby Kennedy chose to see problems first hand |
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