Sunday, April 24, 2016

Arkansas Works

     Arkansas legislators are clapping themselves on the back for successfully implementing Asa Hutchinson's re-branding of Obamacare. They even found an "interesting trick" to get it done. All the while claiming that it was the only option. That is NOT true. RomneyCare/ObamaCare/PrivateOption/ArkansasWorks are the same program, adding huge amounts to our debt while decreasing the quality of medical care and drastically increasing the costs. Arkansas should never have participated in this.
     When it was first passed as the private option, the state took health insurance away from bus drivers and employee spouses from public schools statewide. They did this to drive them into the expanded medicaid system so that repealing it would be painful. It is the same process used by drug pushers to create a sustainable market of addicts for their illicit wares. This is not a madel for compassionate or responsible government.
     The argument was made that we couldn't afford to end the program, that the $100million/year "cost" of ending it would wreck the budget. This was a lie. The budget proposal included over $110million dollars in INCREASED spending on DHS, including a HUGE raise for the director of this department that oversees the Obamacare program we didn't need. Without cutting the budget to ANY program, the "cost" of eliminating our renamed version of Obamacare could easily have been covered merely by limiting the INCREASE in spending on DHS to $10million.
     Another argument was made that there was no way to replace it. While I would suggest that even doing nothing would be better than what we got, there are plenty of other options. Options our pig-headed legislators would never consider because they are bound to serve their establishment masters.
     Of the infinite possibilities that Arkansas could have tried, here's the one I would propose if given the chance. It is simple, easy to implement, and could be the "innovative" example legislators claim to want. Immediately end the medicaid expansion in Arkansas. No need wasting any more money on the increased government (and associated corporate welfare that comes with it) made necessary by accepting it. Replace it with free health clinics at every county health department in the state. Fund it with the so-called "sin" taxes already in place. We already have established health departments in every county, so no new government bureaucracy would be created. Health care would become more accessible to residents of rural counties. Each clinic could provide general wellness exams and preventative care, emergency care, imaging, diagnostics, and more. Access to preventative health care would reduce the number of more serious (and expensive) illnesses. The overcrowding  of emergency rooms and the associated high costs of uncompensated emergency care required by the EMTALA of 1986 would be greatly diminished. Each clinic would function as a teaching environment (collaborating with state universities and community colleges), helping to alleviate the severe shortage of qualified health care workers. State corporate welfare funding for private clinics, such as planned parenthood, could be painlessly eliminated. Additional funding would be available through public/private foundations. Non profit hospitals are already required to spend their excess revenue in charitable ways, this would be one method of doing so. It is a model already being tried on a smaller scale as a way of bringing ambulance service to rural areas.  This is a program that would not require any federal or Obamacare assistance, lowering the burden on taxpayers. By shifting responsibilities into expanding one program that already exists, it would eliminate multiple other related agencies; shrinking the size of government. Increased access to higher quality health care with less government and lower costs. Common sense. Not considered at all by members of our ruling political class because it decreases their power and influence.