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Saw a familiar story out of Missouri this week. Missouri, whose voters passed the ACA's Medicaid expansion over the objections of its legislators who blocked expansion for years, is slow-walking applications for the program. This as the legislature looks for new ways to try and defund the expansion itself.
Missouri taking months to process Medicaid applications
This is a favorite GOP tactic: build as much bureaucracy, red tape, and loathing of one's constituents as possible into government programs to deny as many citizens as possible the services to which they're entitled. We also saw it, for instance, in Florida in 2020, when suddenly lots of people needed to access the state's unemployment system and DeSantis was forced to admit that Rick Scott, his GOP predecessor, had intentionally designed it to be a bureaucratic nightmare.
Gov. Says Florida's Unemployment System Was Designed To Create 'Pointless Roadblocks'
The Georgia GOP speaks for plenty of Republicans when it admits that its "innovative healthcare solutions," its big ideas about how to tackle the big problems in health care, are to build more red tape, more forms, more verifications, more opportunities to boot someone off their coverage for forgetting to check a box or mail in a document. All to try and deny as many people benefits as possible. Inspiring stuff.
Georgia Suing Biden Administration Over Medicaid Rejection
That's the danger of building a governing philosophy around notions that the government shouldn't work and loathing of anyone who might need to access its services.
Missouri taking months to process Medicaid applications
Now, Missouri has more pending applications for MO HealthNet -- the name of the state's Medicaid program -- than people enrolled through the expansion. While 64,210 people have been approved as part of the expansion, nearly 73,000 applications were pending as of early February.
In the state's most recent report, it said it was taking an average of 70 days to process typical applications -- longer than the 45 days allowed by federal law . .
By contrast, most other states are processing Medicaid applications within a week, with many cases taking less than a day, according to federal data from 2021.
This is a favorite GOP tactic: build as much bureaucracy, red tape, and loathing of one's constituents as possible into government programs to deny as many citizens as possible the services to which they're entitled. We also saw it, for instance, in Florida in 2020, when suddenly lots of people needed to access the state's unemployment system and DeSantis was forced to admit that Rick Scott, his GOP predecessor, had intentionally designed it to be a bureaucratic nightmare.
Gov. Says Florida's Unemployment System Was Designed To Create 'Pointless Roadblocks'
Amid staggering job losses in March and April, Florida's unemployment system was the slowest in the country to process claims. Residents described nightmarish experiences as they tried to get benefits. By April 20, just 6% of Floridians who had applied for unemployment benefits had received a check.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said that result was by design.
"Having studied how [the unemployment system] was internally constructed, I think the goal was for whoever designed, it was, 'Let's put as many kind of pointless roadblocks along the way, so people just say, oh, the hell with it, I'm not going to do that,' " DeSantis told a Miami CBS affiliate this week.
Florida's online system, known as CONNECT, debuted in October 2013 during the administration of DeSantis' fellow Republican Rick Scott, now a U.S. senator.
The Georgia GOP speaks for plenty of Republicans when it admits that its "innovative healthcare solutions," its big ideas about how to tackle the big problems in health care, are to build more red tape, more forms, more verifications, more opportunities to boot someone off their coverage for forgetting to check a box or mail in a document. All to try and deny as many people benefits as possible. Inspiring stuff.
Georgia Suing Biden Administration Over Medicaid Rejection
“Simply put, the Biden administration is obstructing our ability to implement innovative healthcare solutions for more than 50,000 hardworking Georgia families rather than rely on a one-size-fits-none broken system," Georgia Gov Brian Kemp, a Republican, said in a news release announcing the lawsuit.
That's the danger of building a governing philosophy around notions that the government shouldn't work and loathing of anyone who might need to access its services.