Health-Care Cost Growth Concerns Governors
Posted on: Tuesday, 19 July 2005, 06:00 CDT
DES MOINES, Iowa -- Governors came together Sunday on sweeping Medicaid changes that could help President Bush's budget goals, even as more than a dozen of the chief executives are weighing a legal fight over new Medicare policy that will cost states hundreds of millions of dollars.
The focus at the governors' summer meeting on the two huge, government-paid health care programs -- Medicare for the elderly, Medicaid for the poor -- underscored their widespread view that health care is their most urgent issue.
"This is coming down the pike at us real quick," Gov. Mark Warner, D-Va., said about the complex new policy changes which governors say will unfairly force them to pay part of President Bush's new prescription drug benefit. "In January it's going to be on our doorstep."
The governors' concerns about Medicare centered on a relatively small portion of Bush's huge, new drug prescription policy that would affect elderly who are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid and old enough to qualify for Medicare. The new Medicare law means the federal government nominally takes over responsibility for that group, but it requires states to continue to pay the overwhelming majority of the bill for their drugs by sending cash to Washington.
Texas Republican Rick Perry vetoed the entire $444 million his state was to send to the federal government for the drug benefits for the next two years, and he rote a letter to fellow governors arguing they should work together to change the federal policy.
Governors met privately Sunday with Sen. Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee that is considering President Bush's budget goal of reducing the growth of Medicaid by $10 billion over the next five years.
Source: Cincinnati Post
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