BuckeyeBlog

The Columbus Dispatch reports:

State regulators have failed to eliminate by today, as promised, the backlog of requests from Medicaid patients for wheelchairs and other medical supplies. 

But the problem isn’t as bad as it was.

There were fewer cases pending yesterday than on July 20 when The Dispatch detailed the 16,000-case backlog and hardship it had created for a teenager with cerebral palsy who had been waiting two years for a new wheelchair.

Keep this backlog in mind when you hear Governor Strickland pushing to expand eligibility in the program. Medicaid can’t serve those who are already enrolled in it. Is it really a good idea to stretch its resources (i.e., your tax money) even further?

Dennis J. Willard of the Akron Beacon Journal writes today that Governor Strickland’s “Conversations on Education” appear to be a sincere attempt to bring about meaningful reform:

It would be easy to dismiss Gov. Ted Strickland’s 12-city tour on education reform as a dog-and-pony show.

To do so, however, would be to prematurely demean the governor’s sincere intentions to seriously address Ohio’s woeful education funding system.

And we should at least give the governor an unimpeded path as he attempts to listen to Ohio.

On Tuesday, Strickland kicked off his ”Conversations on Education” in Columbus before an audience of about 200 people representing educators, parents, students, business owners and others.

The crowd talked about infusing students with passion, making school fun, crafting individual education plans to meet the student’s needs and talents, longer school years, all-day kindergarten, the return of the arts and physical fitness, and less emphasis on testing…

…Still, Strickland admitted afterward that he didn’t hear anything particularly new.

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Governor Strickland’s Health Care Reform Initiative has finally released its recommendations. As I anticipated, they are pretty bad. In short, if these recommendations are adopted you will be paying more for health insurance and more in taxes. So hold onto your wallet. It’s not like you can opt out of taxes and, if this commission gets its way, you can’t opt out of health insurance, either — the government will force you to buy it.

Instead of looking for ways to make health insurance more affordable, the report says that policymakers should add even more regulations on insurance, driving up its costs. But to help people afford insurance, you need to pay more taxes to give them a subsidy. Oh, and Medicaid needs to be bigger.

The recommendations resemble the health care plan that’s being rolled out in Massachusetts. As the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner points out here, that plan isn’t really working out all that well for either the uninsured or taxpayers in Massachusetts. Hopefully something similar isn’t headed to Ohio.

The Dayton Daily News reports that there are some folks in Ohio who are eligible for Medicaid but are waiting to get on the rolls:

A backlog has placed 16,000 Ohio residents in an administrative limbo while they fight to receive Medicaid benefits from the state.

Services for Ohio’s poor, disabled and blind are in short supply and the lines are long. Administrative processes take months — sometimes years — to navigate, leaving in-need residents frustrated or suffering.

Quite a few states have waiting lists for people with disabilities. I think a lot of us would probably agree that providing care for people with disabilities who live in poverty is a legitimate function of the Medicaid program. The fact that these folks can’t receive service in Ohio and other states indicates (to me, at least) that Medicaid should stop trying to provide care for the middle class and instead focus on the truly needy.

Of course, in Ohio the Democratic governor and the Republican General Assembly approved a plan to expand the program to middle class kids. Perhaps they should take care of the folks on the waiting list before they try and dilute the program’s resources any further.

Crossposted at State House Call.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported this weekend on a crisis in the Hamilton County Public Defender’s office.

It seems clear from this article that Hamilton County is not meeting the demands placed on the public defender system, but what is not clear to many is why this system exists in the first place.

The Constitution, as it was originally understood, places limitations on government action. It does not, however, require action of the government. This is consistent with the founders’ view of individual rights, the exercise of which do not require action on the part of others. For instance, Congress may not abridge the freedom of speech. This grants individuals the right to speak, but it does not require the government to provide them with the means to do so (for instance, a radio program). The Supreme Court recently affirmed the individual right to own weapons, but it did not find an obligation of the government to supply each citizen a handgun. Late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist accurately described this interpretation of constitutional rights in his 1989 opinion of DeShaney v. Winnebago County:

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The Enquirer reported on Drake Hospital’s recent turnaround over two weeks ago, but it is a story worth revisiting for further thought:

Three years ago, the long-term rehabilitation hospital was losing more than $10 million a year, slightly less than Hamilton County taxpayers were pumping into it annually to keep the facility afloat. Its costs were 70 percent higher than those of other hospitals. Its chief executive officer was making more than $400,000. Meanwhile, the center was operating at 45 percent of capacity and its supporters lived in fear it would close.

Drake’s only hope was to take a dose of strong medicine. In 2005, Hamilton County commissioners ceded control of the center to the Health Alliance. The old board was dismantled, the administrative team fired, employee benefits slimmed down, and its budget and admissions policies overhauled.

The privatization not only stabilized the care center, it saved it. Now center administrator Karen Bankston, senior vice president at Drake for the Health Alliance, predicts a $9 million surplus by the end of the fiscal year. Equally important, the center has bumped up admissions and is hoping to open its doors to hundreds of Iraq war veterans with brain injuries and land a highly coveted Department of Defense contract for their care.

Alliance officials say the turnaround has been so successful that they’ll no longer need public funds after a Hamilton County operating levy expires next year.

The Drake story offers yet more evidence that private health care is superior to the public health care systems endorsed by certain major presidential candidates. May it serve as a candle, however dim, for an American public currently stumbling around in the dark when it comes to effective health care solutions.

“Doctors have complained for years that Medicare payments have failed to cover rising costs.”

Apparently some fool built fiscal responsibility into the Medicare program. Formulas require a cut in payments whenever the budget is blown, which is, let’s see, every period it’s measured. Or so this article implies, anyway.

Then Congress rushes in, ever the hero, and takes firm action. It waives the fiscal responsibility requirement, so everyone can pretend there’s no problem.

As Father PJ says, if you think health care is expensive now, wait ’til it’s free.

The folks at the American Lung Association’s Ohio chapter are calling for an increase in taxes on tobacco products such as smokeless tobacco and cigars in order to fund their anti-tobacco efforts. This comes on the heels of the Governor and General Assembly de-funding the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Fund and using its money for “economic stimulus.”

But can increased taxes on these products be justified as anything other than anti-smoking activists looking for ways to keep their jobs? I discuss this issue in some detail in my study on Ohio’s Dumb Taxes. I also sum up the issue in this Viewpoint:

It is certainly fair that people should pay for the costs they impose on society. Tobacco users are already doing that, however. Studies indicate the burden smokers place on taxpayers could be oft-set by adding about 32 cents to a pack of cigarettes. Since Ohio taxes cigarettes at $1.25 a pack, the smokers of Ohio are paying for more than their fair share.

Cigars and smokeless tobacco products are also taxed heavily compared to the cost they impose on society. Illnesses from cigars and smokeless tobacco such as chewing tobacco cost taxpayers almost nothing. These products are just not as dangerous as cigarettes. Because of this, they should have no special taxes levied on them. Instead, they have an onerous ad valorem tax imposed by the state that taxes these products based on their price. This distorts the market and unfairly penalizes high-end products.

In short, tobacco users already reimburse the government for any costs imposed on state health systems. If activists were really interested in fairness, they would be pushing for a reduction in tobacco taxes.

Of course, fiscal fairness is probably only one part of the rationale to increase tobacco taxes. Many interest groups want to see taxes raised in order to discourage tobacco usage. It is an improper use of the tax code to try and affect social policy, though. Taxes should be levied to raise revenue for government obligations, not as a way to force people to act certain ways.

Besides being an improper use of the tax code, raising taxes on products to discourage their usage also has unintended consequences. Activists do not seem to realize that not all tobacco products are equally unhealthy. While all tobacco products pose some health risk, smoking cigars or using chewing tobacco causes far fewer health problems than smoking cigarettes. By raising the cost of these less dangerous products the anti-tobacco activists may well cause some people who used these products to satisfy their tobacco habit with cigarettes.

Sherrod Brown has finally decided to go to medical school.

Wright-Patterson’s medical centers have run out of money and are telling patients to go elsewhere. That doesn’t make the good senator happy, so he’s going to fix the problem.

“Resources may be strained, but under no circumstances should a veteran be denied the right care by the right provider,” he said. “I will stay involved to ensure that outcome.”

Unless . . . maybe he’s going to go the more traditional route, and engage in some price-fixing, making sure the price is low enough to serve his voters, er, serve the good citizens of Ohio and anyone else who can cross the border. If that’s his strategy, may we suggest that he go whole hog, and set the price at zero? That way there will be plenty for everyone.

It must be nice to be liberal advocacy group Families USA. Whenever they put out a report light on facts and heavy on rhetoric blasting the free market they get friendly media play from coast to coast. Their latest report, attacking the fact that some insurance policies aren’t as heavily regulated as Families USA would like, got the usual uncritical coverage from Ohio newspapers.

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