And yes, that would be we Groksters. For years we have warned about taking “free money with strings attached.” There’s another meme that describes the below from the Pravda on the Merrimack: “Fed crack.” No, not real drugs but the allure and the addiction is just as real as that white powder: greenbacks. Lots of it. FREE MONEY they say. Until it isn’t free. Or not there at all.
And it is solely the fault of NH Republican elected “leaders” that opened up OUR (financial) veins to inject it into the NH budget. They ha /have no political will to resist, only “gimme, gimme, gimme.”
Though he’s declared himself no fan of Obamacare, Gov. Chris Sununu and fellow Republican governors John Kasich of Ohio and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts oppose the bill because it would cost their states money. Lots of money. New Hampshire would lose $1 billion in federal revenue between 2020 and 2026 which could force the state to, horror of horrors, consider the imposition of a sales or income tax, Sununu said. The alternative, of course, would be to reduce Medicaid benefits, raise eligibility levels and insure fewer people.
So now the NH Republicans may have to walk the political equivalent of the Katahdin’ Knife Edge – which way are they going to fall?
More to the point – will they act to protect NH Taxpayers? Many of whom are stuck in the Obamacare hell of paying 15, 16, 20, 30 thousands of dollars (premiums and deductibles) for their own healthcare insurance BEFORE their benefits start to kick in – or forcing them to pay for those whose benefits kick in right away?
Who will they choose? Will they live up to the Republican ideal of smaller government? Or continue on the path of cementing their position of being the Junior Partner (to the Democrats) of the Welfare State?
The biopsy results will come when or if the Senate votes next week. The vote, if held, will be close, but indications are the bill will fail and the Affordable Care Act will remain in place. Then comes the stress test.
And here is the lesser point (only lesser if the latest, seemingly doomed, “Repeal & Replace” bill fails) of which I have brought up time after time after time:
So far, the federal government has paid 95 percent of the cost of covering an additional 50,000 New Hampshirites under Medicaid. Voluntary contributions from hospitals make up most of the 5 percent remainder. State taxpayers have had a free ride. Hospitals agreed to donate because the contribution represents only a portion of the savings they achieved through a reduction in unnecessary emergency room usage and fewer bills left unpaid by the uninsured.
Just like the real Pravda during the Cold War, there are the first two outright falsehoods by the Concord Monitor.
- Is ANY entity just going to give up/give away revenues just because they’re asked by a politician, especially as we’ve been hearing from these same hospitals that they are flat broke and losing money? Certainly my local hospital, LRGH (Lakes Region General Hospital) has been crying poor mouth (yeah, after a massive spending spree to buy up doctor practices and other healthcare entities (e.g., Franklin Hospital and the former OPA rivals (who had to finally had to give up after LRGH continuously used the CON board in a legal warfare battle against OPA)).
- Free Ride? Hey, Concord Monitor Editorial Board jerkfaces – you really want us to believe that there are NO Federal taxpayers here in NH? Where do you think some of that ObamaStash is coming from?
And to think that I’ve been operating under the assumption that newspapers only told us The Truth?
Remember, too, that I warned everyone that the below was going to happen:
The legality of the hospital donations, under federal Medicaid rules, has been called into question. But that’s only part of the problem. In 2020 the federal contribution drops to 90 percent. Currently the state’s share amounts to about $40 million every two years. That figure will at least double. It’s unlikely that voluntary contributions can or will make up the difference. That’s the stress test.
The NH Republican politicians that created this horrible mess knew this – and did it anyway. The NH Republican politicians that doubled down and reauthorized this knew this – and did it anyway.
So which way will the fall on the Knife Edge? They ignored their own philosophy and voted for this massive increase in government size, cost, and dependency the first two times. Are they about to finalize the transition and become the “swine into ‘more equal than others’ people” in cementing themselves as Democrats-in-actions-if-not-words?
