The very quality for which Time magazine recently lambasted Gov.
Mark Sanford - frugality - is at the heart of his revised proposal
to get a handle on Medicaid costs without throwing poor South
Carolinians to the wolves, health-care-wise. This is a good
thing.
In recent years, Medicaid, the federal-state health care
insurance plan for the poor, eats up an ever-larger share of the
state budget each successive year, mainly because it is a
fee-for-service medical program with costs that are hard to predict
or control. Sanford's solution is to convert the S.C. Medicaid
program into a private managed-care plan over which recipients
themselves would have a measure of control. Recipients would pay
small co-payments, and children's benefits for 19- and 20-year-olds
would be scaled back.
To Sanford's credit, his revised proposal would no longer cut
medical services to younger children and would ensure that pregnant
teenagers receive maternity care. That won't mollify the folks who
think the state's commitment to the program should be open-ended.
But it puts some heart back into the governor's proposal.
Sanford's detractors should remember that the state's only other
option for controlling Medicaid costs is eliminating the working
poor from the Medicaid rolls. Sanford's plan, while not perfect, is
aimed at giving the working poor access to health care along with
folks who fall below the federal poverty line.
The plan should slow growth of state Medicaid spending, freeing
up resources for education and other critical needs. For that reason
especially, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should
approve the governor's
proposal.
