Almost exactly two years ago, Gov. Rick Snyder was on the fence about Medicaid expansion in Michigan. His chief concern was whether or not we have enough doctors to provide health care instead of people “simply going to an emergency room”:
“I want to make sure we have access and high quality care if we’re to look into something like that, and say, ‘What’s the net cost to all of us?’”Snyder also says he wants to make sure health care providers can accommodate adding hundreds of thousands of people to the program.
“The key issue on the Medicaid expansion that I want to do some research on, among others, is do we have enough capacity to put essentially 400,000 more people into a medical home model with a primary care environment, as opposed to having them simply go to an ER?”
Snyder also says he wants to make sure health care providers can accommodate adding hundreds of thousands of people to the program.
The glibness with which he said people could “simply go to an ER” betrays the mindset of someone who has never in their life had to even ponder the idea of getting their routine healthcare from an emergency room or of having to skip paying a bill to pay for the healthcare of a child. It was tone deaf beyond measure.
Eventually, Gov. Snyder did figure out what a great deal Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act was and then proceeded to show almost no leadership on the issue. Thanks to that lack of leadership and the intractable position on the ACA taken by so many Republican legislators until the thirteenth hour, Michigan lawmakers did eventually pass Medicaid expansion but did it in such a way that it cost the state more than $600 million in lost federal dollars and forced tens of thousands of Michiganders to wait for an entirely unnecessary three additional months before they could take advantage of this important and, for some, essential federal benefit.
But now, Gov. Snyder is happy to take credit for it. He did so during the campaign and, judging by a recent tweet, he’s going to do it again during his State of the State address tomorrow night:
Healthy Michigan allowed more than 500,000 hard-working, low-income Michiganders to have access to affordable & quality healthcare #MISOTS15
— Governor Rick Snyder (@onetoughnerd) January 18, 2015
This guy…
I am happy to give our Governor credit when he does something right but I refuse to give him credit for something he stood in the way of for so long and the failed to provide leadership on. I guess now that he’s running for president or some other national position, he’s got to make people believe he’s actually accomplished something other than to put our state budget $325 million in the hole thanks to monster tax breaks given to businesses, something that will force cuts to services in order to balance the budget.
[Snyder caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog]
