Health Care - Insure Missouri
As a gubernatorial candidate in 2004, Matt Blunt promised not to make it harder to qualify for Medicaid. Upon becoming Governor in January 2005, he immediately broke that promise. As a result, more than 180,000 fewer Missourians – including 70,000 children – have access to health care services than when he took office.
The Governor’s latest effort to mitigate the continuing public backlash over the 2005 cuts is his Insure Missouri plan. But, like his renaming of Medicaid to MO HealthNet in 2007, Insure Missouri is just another attempt to distract the public from his devastating health care cuts.
Insure Missouri would do nothing to help uninsured children, senior citizens or the disabled, nor will it restore the health care cuts made in 2005.
And, because it relies heavily on health management organizations, Insure Missouri would do little for rural Missourians, where HMOs have scant penetration.
During the 2007 legislative session and citing figures provided by Blunt’s own Department of Social Services, House Democrats pointed out it would cost $155.8 million in general revenue to undo the 2005 cuts and restore health care coverage to most of the 180,000 Missourians who lost it. Doing so would have allowed the state to receive $265.3 million in additional federal Medicaid funds that is now going to other states.
With a general revenue surplus estimated at $200 million at the time the legislature was debating the FY 2008 state budget, the State had sufficient funds to undo the cuts. In July, the surplus was revised to $320 million. In response Governor Blunt and Republican legislative leaders offered wildly inflated cost estimates for restoration ranging from $500 million to $900 million in general revenue, although they never offered a factual basis for their estimates.
The Governor now claims that through Insure Missouri he can extend coverage to more people (200,000) for a mere $46 million by 2010. In the space of a few months, the Governor has gone from drastically over-inflating the cost of improving health care access to significantly low-balling it.