Unnatural Disasters

I was in class last night, and our discussion turned to recent news stories about the investigation into health care workers' claims that individual doctors may have euthanized patients waiting to be evacuated from New Orleans hospitals post-Katrina.

My professor asked what we would do if we'd been a doctor in this situation. We also talked about how we might feel if we were a member of one of the patients' families. To me, the whole conversation, what to do with the people left behind, exposed the real tragedy - that people were left behind.

But it's easy to look at how the federal government left so many behind in the wake of a devastating natural disaster. It's more challenging to look at who's being left behind when it's business as usual.

On Feb. 1, 2006, Congress made $40 billion in permanent cuts that mean more people uninsured and underinsured, fewer children receiving child support payments, and new federal welfare policies shutting down much of the state flexibility in welfare to work programs.

How will these cuts affect Minnesotans?

• One in 9 Minnesotans are currently on Medicaid. The budget cuts will increase their copayments and make it legal for providers to deny coverage to those who can not meet the copayments. This will effectively undo legal protections currently in place that make it illegal for pharmacists to deny medications to persons covered by Medicaid.
  

• Many Minnesotan Medicaid beneficiaries, particularly those with disabilities, could lose access to medically-necessary services like therapy, eyeglasses, and hearing aids.

• The cuts in welfare-to-work provisions could force Minnesota to make large cuts in child care subsidies for low-income families not receiving federal cash assistance, undermining our state's long-standing efforts to "make work pay" as part of its welfare reform agenda.

• While the budget agreement does include funding for federal energy assistance programming, those funds are not available until 2007, so there will be no help for Minnesotans this winter. (Source: Minnesota Budget Project)

So here's my question: if you were the family member of one of the one in nine Minnesotans who may do without medication, or if you were the family member of one of the 343,000 Minnesotans without any health coverage at all, how would you feel about the way they've been left behind? Not by a natural disaster but intentionally, by budget cuts that further limit assistance to those who already need it most?

Staff

If you're interested in learning more about how federal budget cuts will impact Minnesotans and what we can still do, join me at a briefing held by Affirmative Options next Tuesday.