ER doctor confronts Mike Pence in Iowa about Trump Medicaid cuts, and Pence fails spectacularly
he encountered something that made him visibly uncomfortable—a well-informed citizen.
Dr. Davidson directly and respectfully asks him about the administration’s just-announced cuts to Medicaid as well as planned cuts to Medicare. Noting that a large number of his patients depend on Medicaid for their treatment in his ER, he asks Pence whether cuts to the program are a “good idea.”
The cuts referred to by Dr. Davidson are
a policy change quietly implemented last week by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Under the new policy, bearing the Orwellian le of the “Healthy Adult Opportunity” initiative,
block grants for Medicaid funding are to be provided to states.
This would undo 55 years of Medicaid policy, and,
as Medicaid and Medicare advocates contend,
will allow individual states the flexibility to weaken the program.
By imposing a regime of block grants,
the federal government would allow states to decide who and who not to cover, and what to cover at all.
The “block grant” initiative will
also make the process more complex and confusing for Medicaid-eligible people,
another deliberate effort by
the Trump administration to reduce health care provided to poorer Americans. As noted here:
Spending caps would lead to limits on enrollment, which are barriers to care,
would limit payment for care across all beneficiaries (even if the policy focuses on the expansion population), and
would limit all types of benefits coverage —
the opposite of furnishing medical assistance.
Pence at first says he hasn’t heard about any cuts to “Medicare,”
then pivots to what he did as Governor of Indiana, specifically his decision to accept Medicaid expansion for his home state under the Affordable Care Act.
he then resorts to some mushy non-verbiage about “reform” of the Medicaid system.
Davidson, undeterred, proceeds to pepper Pence with questions about the cruelty of administration policy towards the poor. Pence is visibly unable or unwilling to justify that policy
Davidson doesn’t let him get away with that, and tells him he’s referring to the actions of the Trump administration.“When I told him he is putting my patients' lives at risk,
@VP deflected and denied knowledge of the policy.
He either doesn't understand, or
doesn't care
about the impact of this administrations' policies on patients everywhere.”
“People I see in the emergency department that can't get primary care doctors, once they got Medicaid they could get primary care doctors and stay out of the ER, they work more, they actually contribute to our community more,” he adds.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/2/1915906/-ER-doctor-confronts-Mike-Pence-in-Iowa-about-Trump-Medicaid-cuts-and-Pence-fails-spectacularly?detail=emaildkre