Thursday editorial: Misleading Missouri on health care
The number of uninsured Missouri children increased by 44 percent since Gov. Matt Blunt took office in 2005, a fact we noted on this page Sept. 14. In a letter to the editor that we published Wednesday, Mr. Blunt complained that the editorial “misled readers and failed to fully compare Missouri with Illinois.”
In the interest of fair comparison, here are facts, complete with source citations. You can look them up and decide for yourself what is accurate, what is misleading and what is spin.
Let’s start with the editorial’s premise, which the governor’s complaint letter failed to address at all: Between 2005, when Mr. Blunt became governor, and 2007, the number of uninsured children in Missouri increased by 44 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. During that same period, the number of uninsured Illinois children was reduced by 1.7 percent.
• Unable to disprove these simple facts, Mr. Blunt bragged, instead, about Missouri’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program known as MC+ for Kids. Among comparable state programs, he wrote, Missouri’s is among the few that provide care to children in families earning up to 300 percent of poverty, about $51,500 for a family of three.
But Illinois also has a program called All Kids that is open to all Illinois children regardless of family income, and it’s the major reason why the state reduced the number of uninsured kids between 2005 and 2007— just the opposite of the trend in Missouri.
• Mr. Blunt’s letter also failed to mention that in cutting medical coverage for low-income working families in 2005, he made it harder for many of Missouri’s children to qualify for the MC+ program he praised so effusively.
Just before Mr. Blunt signed the Medicaid cuts in 2005, there were 554,286 Missouri children enrolled in MC+ for Kids, according to figures from the state Department of Social Services. At the end of June 2008, 486,522 children were enrolled, a decline of 67,764 — 12.2 percent — on Mr. Blunt’s watch.
• The governor’s letter said that the total number of uninsured Missourians fell by 43,000 between 2006 and 2007. It failed to point out, however, that the number increased by 104,000 after Mr. Blunt’s first year in office. Overall, the number of uninsured Missourians of all ages has increased by 61,000 under Mr. Blunt, according to U.S. Census figures. That’s a 9 percent increase. During the same period, the number of uninsured Illinois residents fell by 30,000.
Ordinarily, we accord readers fairly wide latitude to respond, in print and online, to published editorials. As editors and reporters at the state’s largest newspaper, we realize that we have a larger platform from which to make our points.
But as the governor of the state, Mr. Blunt has a significant platform as well, and despite his lame-duck status, he has used it with increasing frequency to launch misleading claims against people and institutions he perceives as political enemies. As those attacks are amplified through other media outlets, some Missourians may not realize that Mr. Blunt’s claims may be factually incorrect.
For example, he repeated a misleading claim in his letter to the Post-Dispatch this week: “When I took office in January 2005, I inherited a $1.1 billion budget deficit.”
There was no deficit. Missouri law does not permit it. The $1.1 billion figure Mr. Blunt cited and has cited in the past represented the difference between budget wish lists prepared by state department heads and the state’s projected revenues for his first year in office. The difference between the two cannot legitimately be called a budget deficit in which actual state spending exceeds revenues.
Mr. Blunt is entitled to his own opinions and to the respect accorded the office of governor. He is not entitled, however, to his own set of facts.
Post-Dispatch file photo.
Under Republican governence, both nationally and state-wide, it is apparent that just chanting the mantra “lower taxes” doesn’t meet the needs of it’s citizens. Missouri particularly is suffering with infra-structure deficits cited by crumbling bridges and roads. So too is the health care structure in our state. Governor Blunt’s total disregard for the fate of those who relied upon the safety-net the Medicaid program provided in order to keep up the chanting “lower taxes” was typical of the party-first, citizens-last that Republicans seems to embrace. The fact that our state and country is facing such astronomical deficits and financial disaster is further testament to the flawed platform of “party-first, citizens last”. At some point in time we are all called upon to pay more taxes to shore-up failing systems. In the case at hand in the country today the bill has now risen to 700 Billion Dollars.
> As editors and reporters at the state’s largest newspaper, we realize
> that we have a larger platform from which to make our points.
And the way you use this platform to put forth misleading attacks on Republicans, and to so consistently ignore the lies and scandals surrounding Democrats (except for, inexplicably, Mr. Blagojevich) that it can’t possibly be a mere oversight, is shameful.
What is misleanding for $200?
Nick,
I know you looked up the links on this editorial. Please tell me what you think is misleading.
Doc, just how many Great Society offspring do you think the taxpayers should support in addition to our own? My wife and I fed, clothed, housed, educated, transported, and provided health care for our own three children. Despite hard work and sacrifices for our own we also had much of our earnings confiscated to do the same for the stray children of other parents who put cell phones, big screen TVs, tobacco and alcohol ahead of insurance for their offspring.
When they start neutering the government sponsored human baby factories like they do stray cats I might understand some of your guilt complex. Meanwhile my contributions to private charity give me a clear conscience without supporting the bureaucratic waste and theft by taxation involved in government worshiping socialism.
I resent being forced under penalty of law to pay child support for children I did not father. I might resent it less if the PD occasionally used its “larger platform” to investigate and expose some of the bureaucratic waste, corruption, and fraud inherent in all these bloated programs.
I find it just a bit disingenuous on the part of the Post-Dispatch Editorial Department, that they took issue with Governor Matt Blunt’s “Letter to the Editor” from Wednesday, but not mine that appeared on Tuesday. I guess that the Post-Dispatch staff does not think the lack of child support enforcement in this state has contributed to the large number of children on MC+.
I have no political axe to grind, nor am I running for public office at this point in time. However if the Post-Dispatch is interested in REAL facts, perhaps they should challenge my letter as they did the Governor’s? I think readers of the Post-Dispatch would be better served if the paper did its own investigation of child support enforcement, or lack of it, in the State of Missouri.
A FACTUAL study by the Post and its staff would be of the utmost help in this area.
A#
It’s hard to tell where to start with your comment. I’m sure you don’t really mean to advocate either involuntary sterilization of or forced abortions for poor people.
You also seem to be saying that Great Society programs like Medicare have failed. I’ll leave it up to you to make an explicit case for doing away with Medicare. But let me point out that when Medicare began, the elderly made up about half the people living in poverty. Today, they make up about 10 percent. Which is the largest group living in poverty today, you ask? That would be children.
Let’s get back to the original editorial.
It pointed out that the number of uninsured kids in Missouri increased by 44 percent between 2005 and 2007. As we pointed out, some significant part of that loss seems to come from kids no longer covered by private health insurance.
That’s worrisome for health care economists, because private health insurance is how most Americans pay for care (again, I’ll leave it up to you to make the case that they’d be better off without that benefit).
In the past, some of the slack caused by workers and their families losing private health insurance has been picked up by expanding government programs, which is what happened in Illinois. But bear in mind that as the economy tanks, eligibility for existing programs will grow so the effect of any expansion will be magnified.
Clearly, public officials need to be thinking about how to keep the system of employer-based health insurance viable or bad things will happen (even more Americans will be uninsured and the health care system would face financial collapse).
But that can’t happen when the governor is in denial about — and trying to mislead voters about — the number of people who have become uninsured during his term in office.
A couple with 3 kids can make up to $36,000 and get free insurance for their kids. They can pay a premium and participate in the state program with income up to $72,000 a year. In 2007, those in the 4th quintile for household income - that is, those between 60% and 80% highest income - had a median income of $79,000. So unless we’re going to offer MC+ to the very richest families, we’ve opened the doors as wide as we can.
The republicans responding to this blog obviously are self-centered oafs who would do nothing to help someone else no matter the “cost”. Scared little people feverishly trying to keep every cent they have like they will be rewarded for having wealth in some sick afterlife.
willys… You are obviously one of those people who thinks using the powers govenment to steal from others and redistribute demonstrates your selfless “compassion.” Voluntary contributions of time and money are discounted by you government worshiping bomb throwers in the class war being waged by the left. Your puppet master, George Soros, might be impressed, but this taxpayer is not.