States forced? to cut health coverage for poor? Really USA Today?

At http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-10-28-health-cuts_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip#uslPageReturn
Julie Appleby reports for USA Today that states are being "forced" to cut health coverage for the poor. And we read it and think what? Why don't those poor people have to pay for health insurance like the rest of us, right? Wrong. Why do we accept governmental employee benefits as a sacred cow, untouched by the economic crisis, untouched by the "empowerment" that has left the rest of us paying more for worse insurance? The first reason is that we don't look up the governmental benefits package available at every level of government for its employees. So do that now.
The second thing we don't think about is that our TAX dollars provide this entitlement to government employees. This one is surprising. While a person can be anti-big government, anti-entitlement, anti-"spreading the wealth" as has been misquoted for campaign flash, why don't we question this hugely expensive entitlement that taxpayers have and continue to pay?

If you go to the Federal government benefit website it brags that it insures more people than any other group...is this really okay in an environment like this? Can we really take seriously the please of conservatives that we all participate in the "free" market while they continue to accept this handout? (Handout meaning their employer, the government and taxpayers help foot the bill for their superior benefits).

How can we expect individuals who reap the benefits of such plans year after year to act and reform the corrupt, wasteful health insurance environment whose own lobbyists acknowledge that less than half of every premium dollar paid by consumers actually goes to medical care for that consumer?

Change will occur a lot faster if government employees join the rest of us in the expensive and inadequate pit they helped create by giving into insurance company lobbyists. Look how fast the bailout of banks occurred. And the same people who will be outraged by the use of our bailout dollars to pay millions in CEO compensation don't blink an eye at the use of our money to finance the entitlement of superior health insurance benefits to the same people who are telling us to participate in the "free" market.

What happens after we let the poor die? Do you really think that the costs of final treatment for these individuals in hospitals will not be a cost passed onto consumers?
And if you do think this will actually save money, then why all the focus on prevention as a money saver?

In order to make progress we need first to stop being distracted: 1) Health insurance that does not cover the risk of the cost of obtaining needed medical treatment is not insurance. The less risk such policies cover, the less they are insurance policies and the more they are policies that cover only finite costs, a discount plan for obtaining regular checkups. 2) Premium dollars spent on obtaining actual medical care for each premium paying consumer must be greater than the current utilization rate of about 43%. If I pay a dollar I want it to get me a dollar worth of care, or as near to it as possible. I don't want 57% of administrative costs to eat away at the money I spend thinking I will get health care coverage. 3)Government entitlements for government employees should be the first to go which will instantly save billions of dollars that can be used for the benefit of the people those governmental employees are supposed to be working for, us. 4) We have been spreading the wealth by supporting governmental employee benefits packages over the narrow group of governmental employees rather than the rest of the population, this should stop.
5)Every Republican who asks a consumer to toughen up, healthy up, and stop whining about health insurance should be put on the spot and expected to decline governmental health benefits.

We've got to get smarter and telling those poor folks they can just die is not smart, it's mean-spirited nonsense.




States forced to cut health coverage for poor