“Potentially Devastating”, that’s how Rich Umbdenstock president of the American Hospital Association describes the President’s Budget Proposal in a recent interview.   Medicare and Medicaid finds itself under attack as the President sets out his agenda of budget priorities.  The President spoke of the need to improve the healthcare system in his State of the Union address, but again his words are nothing more than the same tired rhetoric.   In typical Bush style, the things he says and the things he does appear to be two separate things altogether. 

Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for people with limited income.  The Medicaid program provides much needed services for people with disabilities in our country.  People living with HIV/AIDS depend on Medicaid to provide them with their needed medication which is too expensive to be purchased on their own.  An estimated 19.7 million children are enrolled in Medicaid and depend on it to provide proper healthcare through their childhood.   

So its hard to understand why President Bush has issued his call for fiscal responsibility not by ending the war in Iraq, or ending his tax cuts for the wealthy, but instead by proposing to cut over $100 billion from Medicaid and Medicare over the next five years. Such a plan could affect the over 93 million low income and senior Americans who use the programs.   

Local school districts and local taxpayers may get an unexpected surprise if Bush’s proposal for Medicaid passes.  School districts who provide speech and physical therapy for students with Medicaid get reimbursed from Medicaid.  The Presidents proposal would eliminate over $3.6 billion over five years of the school funding for speech and physical therapy programs; however, schools would still be required to provide the programs to those students, which means schools must find other ways of paying for them including raising local taxes or cutting funding from other programs.  

Even worse the Presidents plan would eliminate funding for graduate medical education for the nation's 800 teaching hospitals, potentially affecting thousands of graduate students across the country.  The loss of funding for medical education could leave the country with an even larger shortage of healthcare professionals.  

Umbdenstock told Newsweek that “Cuts of this magnitude would undercut hospitals’ ability to sustain services for the poor, for children, for the elderly—we’re talking about huge and potentially devastating effects.” “Our clear belief is that the only way to help this health-care system is to start talking about comprehensive health-care reform—that’s a conversation we’d like to have. Cutting payments to providers is not reform.” 

The way to solve the rising healthcare costs in America is not to destroy the institutions which provide it, it’s to work with healthcare providers and others to find ways to make healthcare more affordable.  Bush’s plan will not only leave millions more without any kind of healthcare coverage, it will only transfer the costs elsewhere in uncompensated care, costly emergency room visits and higher local taxes to pay for the rising costs.