Medicaid cuts

I am a 53-year-old quadriplegic, one of many severely disabled Missourians deemed Medicaid ineligible if the House passes SB 539. With the help of in-home personal care provided by Medicaid, I was able to leave the dehumanizing confinement of a Missouri nursing home and for the past five years have lived in my own apartment with a dignity and quality of life unmatched by any institution.

If the governor's yes-men have their way, it will be a short ride back to the nursing home for me. Does Gov. Matt Blunt really believe that we, the profoundly disabled poor, can maintain ourselves in our barely affordable apartments without the help of Medicaid? Since when does a person living at poverty level have the means to pay someone to bathe, dress, feed or bodily lift him from a bed to a wheelchair?

Of course, politicians like Matt Blunt already know that passage of this bill will make it impossible for thousands of severely disabled Missourians to survive without institutionalization. Never mind that maintaining a disabled person in his own home is cheaper.

But not to worry — this bill will be great for business, and the nursing home industry thanks you from the bottom of its heart.

Keith Summers

Springfield

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/opinion/local1/11328524.htm

with my sister in Indiana. She is a diabetic, and just had her second leg amputated. Multiple catastrophic health problems. But she's able to live in her own little apartment, and really values her privacy. She's already expected to live on a pittance, I don't know what she'll do if they cut that further.
It's typical Repuglican mode now--there is something wrong with you, and you've brought it on yourself if you are poor, disabled, sick. You must be punished. Despite their blather, they don't have a compassionate bone in their bodies. My other sister, also a catastrophically ill diabetic, was literally hounded to death.
State budgets everywhere are in crisis because the feds have pulled the funding for all kinds of programs, so they can redistribute the money as "tax cuts". Medicaid is going down the toilet, not in 2042, but right now, because the only attention it is getting is all bad.

They're culling the herd, cutting off support for the sickest and frailest among us to further line the pockets of the haves and have mores.
This is just their sick sense of social darwinism survival of the fittest scheme, and is probabbly a game, entertainmement to a priveleged class.

In affect you've got notice that the state of Missouri no longer considers herself reponcible for the well being of the most vunerable, and if you're dependent upon medicaid for your existance, if you're still here come August you're on your own kid.

The people I talk to who are Republican largely approve of the cuts. They think it will only affect people who are gouging the system. I try over and over to tell them, no it's people who have no other way to help themselves. People who are trying to work and provide for themselves are going to slide into poverty, lose their homes and have to be institutionalized. They shake their heads and look at me like I'm crazy. So, because I know these people and they know me on a day-to-day basis, I say this is going to affect me and my kids. I am a single mom who makes $7.50 an hour. I do not receive child support, and pay for child care for both of my children so that I may work. My 3 yr old qualifies for Child Care Assistance (which may be cut) but my older child goes to a 'prime-time' program at a local church. The church does not accept state assistance payments. I am responsible for the cost difference between what my daycare charges and what the state assists with. These daycares cost me $50 a week plus gas to take my youngest to a decent daycare which is 10 miles outside of Springfield (this will be changing, I simply cannot afford the extra tank of gas every week, especially now and finally a position opened up in a good one nearby). My budget squeaks as it is. I have a phone. I have a car and all the attendant costs (I saved for a month to have the $50 it would take to renew the license on it) but it is mine, no payment. I get food stamps but it is not enough to last the month. There is nothing left over. I was able to buy my sons some new clothes only because I got a bit back from my income taxes.
I am trying hard to stand on my own. I am trying to go back to school but if a Pell Grant won't cover everything, I won't be able to make it. I have heard so many horror stories about student loans, I don't even want to think about it.
And now Matt Blunt is about to put me back in the gutter where I was five years ago. I won't be able to pay an extra $45 a week for child care. I won't be able to keep a job because I won't be able to keep my sons in a decent daycare and will have to be off with them whenever I can't find a friend or family member to watch them. They will be ill more often and for longer periods because I cannot afford to take them to the doctor. The same will be true for myself. In these circumstances, what am I to do? I've finally gotten some modicum of self-reliance. Though I am not completely self-sufficient, I am working toward that goal. I have had some major setbacks but I think I am finally ready to go forward.
But unless I begin getting long-overdue child support and insurance for the kids as the courts have ordered, I will need state assistance. There is not another option for me. I don't have the experience and education necessary to get a better job. I need a better job to get off state assistance.
As the disabled are trapped into institutions, the poor are trapped in being poor, more prone to catastrophic illnesses without some type of health care coverage. We will become less productive citizens. Every one of us who really needs the state help to help ourselves will become a larger burden on a broken system.
The worst of it is not even the story of those disabled persons having to go into nursing homes. The worst of it is that a whole generation of our children hangs in the balance.
Social Darwinism, yes. It makes me sick.

I feel your pain. But let it be a consolation to you that many others are in your same boat. Blunt and his cronies cannot screw so many people and not have it come back to haunt them big time. Many of the people who voted for him are on Medicaid or need some of the state programs he is cutting. Many of these people claim to be Republicans. If you want to understand why they voted the way they did, I recommend reading Thomas Franks' book What's The Matter with Kansas. He explains why so many people in this country are voting against their own best interests. We can only hope and pray that they will wake up one day and realize what a horrid choice they made.

I know a couple who are raising their 4 grandchildren. The foster grandparents program allows them to provide for their grandchildren. Without that program, I don't know how they are going to continue supporting these children. The grandfather is disabled and unable to work. The grandmother was a stay at home mom and is now fighting cancer. I think about them every day when I hear of more of Blunt's barbaric cuts. How I wish they were one of only a few affected.

Why oh why can't the state merely curb the abuses in state programs instead of denying aid to the needy who don't abuse the programs? They keep offering this excuse - too many are abusing the system. But is penalizing ALL who benefit from these programs really the answer?