What about Medicaid reform??
Here is a letter to the editor I sent to the Commericial News and News Gazette today:
One wonders what excuse the 64 members of the Illinois House of Representatives who voted against a bill for Medicaid reforms could possibly have, given several known facts. One, that getting and keeping more people on the Medicaid rolls cannot be proven to raise the overall standard of living in the state- in fact, if one knows anything about economics and human incentive they know that it does the opposite- which is to say there is a point where so called ‘safety nets’ make us all poorer and have less opportunities available because money is diverted from productive sectors of the economy that have a chance of creating a job or two and sunk into programs that create dependency and perpetuate poverty. Here in Illinois where we lose 650 jobs a day, but where 1 in 5 residents are Medicaid recipients, it is hard to imagine any other state where this is more true. Secondly, Medicaid is the #1 budget item, and even the non-partisan Taxpayers Action Board issued a report giving many reasonable options for reform that would save millions. This bill proposed by Rep. Patti Bellock was about as watered-down an attempt at reform one could imagine… and even it failed. What can these 64 “Representatives” in Springfield be thinking? I am happy that at least we will have a good option here in the 52nd State Senate district in November’s election, Al Reynolds, a political outsider who supports real budget balancing measures.
Hannah Landis
One wonders what excuse the 64 members of the Illinois House of Representatives who voted against a bill for Medicaid reforms could possibly have, given several known facts. One, that getting and keeping more people on the Medicaid rolls cannot be proven to raise the overall standard of living in the state- in fact, if one knows anything about economics and human incentive they know that it does the opposite- which is to say there is a point where so called ‘safety nets’ make us all poorer and have less opportunities available because money is diverted from productive sectors of the economy that have a chance of creating a job or two and sunk into programs that create dependency and perpetuate poverty. Here in Illinois where we lose 650 jobs a day, but where 1 in 5 residents are Medicaid recipients, it is hard to imagine any other state where this is more true. Secondly, Medicaid is the #1 budget item, and even the non-partisan Taxpayers Action Board issued a report giving many reasonable options for reform that would save millions. This bill proposed by Rep. Patti Bellock was about as watered-down an attempt at reform one could imagine… and even it failed. What can these 64 “Representatives” in Springfield be thinking? I am happy that at least we will have a good option here in the 52nd State Senate district in November’s election, Al Reynolds, a political outsider who supports real budget balancing measures.
Hannah Landis
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