What Do People On Welfare Get

One bad idea would leave 25000 in NJ without health coverage

Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) had a simple question at yesterday’s hearing on Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed $540 million cut in Medicaid spending: What if a patient is receiving chemotherapy when he is thrown off the program?

He was assured that person would continue to get the needed care.

Okay, Vitale said, what about someone with diabetes? Or asthma?

“Where exactly do we draw the line?” he asked. “Is there a list of sicknesses? Is it when they are on their way to the grave? Or halfway?”

Vitale knew there was no good answer. The hard truth is that when you throw people off these programs, they are more likely to get sick and die prematurely. He didn’t want this hearing to pass without pausing to acknowledge it.

But this was not the usual script. Vitale’s loaded questions were aimed at a friend, Jennifer Velez, the commissioner of human services, who has — for years — been his trusted ally in the fight to expand coverage of the uninsured.

This year, though, Velez is pushing a plan to revamp Medicaid that Democrats are vowing to fight. The $540 million cut is the deepest in the entire budget and will result in roughly 25,000 people being denied coverage over the next year.

Velez’s plan is packed with good ideas, as even Vitale concedes. She wants to move more Medicaid patients into managed care. She would move patients from nursing homes to less intensive and expensive settings. She would claim more federal dollars. She would fund promising pilot programs, such as one in Camden that focuses intensive care on the most expensive patients, those with repeated hospital visits.

A lot of these changes would save money and improve care. They are the type of smart reforms that have earned Velez respect from all corners in Trenton.

But along with those good ideas, there is one awful one: to shut the gates for those 25,000.

This includes 1,400 adults who will lose Medicaid coverage, and about 23,000 working poor adults who will no longer be eligible to sign up. Those already in the program can stay, but the gates will be shut to new applicants who earn more than $100 a week, so the number denied care will grow each year.

The tragedy is that this is not necessary. Closing the gates will save the state only $13 million. In other words, if no one were excluded, this reform would still save $527 million. During the hearing, Vitale asked Velez whose idea this was. She dodged that one.

CareCrunch Answers » Answers Archive » How many conservatives who…?

History dictates war is in fact the answer in some instances. That’s why history is important. You don’t have to eat a turd just to know it’s going to taste bad. There is collateral damage, but inaction would lead to greater pain in the long run…take Hitler and his intent to wipe out all Jews, without war he may have been successful. He’d also disrupt economic stability in the global markets.

-who talk about moral values actually follow them? Posted 13 hours ago

-How many know a gay kid and are actually friends with them? Quite a few, Sheri one of my good friends, use to be a man. My aunt and my cousin are gay and I have had more girlfriends than boyfriends (before I got married)

-How many talk about how people are poor is not your problem have ever felt the effects of poverty? I have been homeless. I have dumpster dived just to eat.

-Who talk about welfare abuse actually know anyone on welfare? Yes. My irresponsible low life sister. She doesn’t have money to pay her bills and can’t get a job, but she just spent $1300 on a TV and surround sound system.

-Who see war as the answer ever been to war? I spent 6 years in the Navy. At the time we were in Iraq, but the Navy thought that I would be of better use making sure the communication systems for the entire Pacific fleet were working properly.

-who talk about moral values actually fallow them? Everyone has their own morals and values. I do my best to live up to my own standards.

I am a nobody special, I am me and I know poverty, been there and lived it. My father was in the army and later in life my brother and I had a son that was in the military and nephews. I am all in where your coming from so what is your point. I am highly excepted in my own opinions and in my faith and called a conservative, a liberal, and many other things. I could even be an independent or just a good old folk but I am glad you don’t see me as a republican for my beliefs are different then many. Yet! same as others. My religion is a marriage between a woman and man is of God. However, I believe all children are of God and in ways they turn out shall be placed upon our head if our teaching them is not the right way. It is not my religion to teach my children or grandchildren that it is right to love the same sex. Sorry if this hurts you but that is not God’s way. I except what I must and when I must as I must teach the way God wants me to for his beloved son had his life taken for all our sins. Jesus is Our Savior and he loved the world. He did not love the same kind as himself in such partnership it was no such thing. That came from man kind, not God. I live by the morals that God gives me to live by for they is no better morals to go by.

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