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House GOP Budget Drastically Cuts Funding for Children's Hospitals
Paul Ryan will retire come January 2019, at least temporarily. His political career is best summarized by saying he has championed evil policies while many tout him as an intellectual...the smart one in the GOP. He's not smart, nor has be accomplished anything positive. Good riddance.
The nation’s children’s hospitals would see drastic reductions in funding for their patients if the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives’ proposed budget passes.... the situation for children’s hospitals would be made worse if House Republicans are successful in their latest attempt to slash spending on Medicaid, which pays for half of pediatric care at U.S. children’s hospitals.
Ryan is pushing again for House Republicans to gut healthcare, including for children, as his parting shot.
....as Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives resurrect some of the same approaches to government spending that have already failed....
Last year the Ryan-backed American Health Care Act, also known as Trumpcare, would have rolled back the Medicaid expansion.... eventually died in the U.S. Senate amid a public outcry over the millions of Medicaid patients projected by the Congressional Budget Office to lose health coverage.
But House Republicans are back again with a similar proposal tucked inside their fiscal 2019 budget proposal, which includes an effort to turn Medicaid into a block grant program that would essentially set spending limits akin to the American Health Care Act (AHCA).
This specifically goes after KIDS. “Anytime you cut the Medicaid program either directly or through block granting, you are disproportionally impacting kids,” Children’s Hospital Association CEO Mark Wietecha said in an interview. The association represents more than 200 U.S. children’s hospitals.
Children’s hospitals, like other inpatient facilities, increasingly see a higher concentration of patients with more serious illnesses that are more costly to treat.... “We have more Medicaid kids and we have sicker kids,” Wietecha said. “Those two things put financial stress onto the hospitals.” Medicaid has gradually grown as the health insurance for most children since 2001, when nearly 55% of pediatric patients had commercial insurance coverage to just 40% today....
EVIL.