Beshear Simply Wrong
Governor Beshear penned a simple editorial in the C-J today:
By accepting the Senate Majority's stubborn and unconscionable rewriting of House Bill 1, so that the bill could come to my desk, the House enabled me to come forward Friday with my veto pen and restore common sense to the mission of rebalancing the state's 2011 Medicaid budget.
This mission started as a simple problem -- a shortfall that came to light several months ago.
In November, we proposed a solution to that problem that was simple, reasonable and founded on programs that have worked in other states.
We proposed filling the shortfall in the 2011 Medicaid budget with money from the 2012 Medicaid budget, then filling the newly created hole with efficiency measures and with new managed-care delivery principles that many states have used to reduce their Medicaid costs.
It was a short-term fix with long-term gain.
How simple does he think we are?
As we've written, it is simply misleading to suggest that "filling the shortfall in the 2011 Medicaid budget with money from the 2012 Medicaid budget, then filling the newly created hole with efficiency measures and with new managed-care delivery principles" is a "simple, reasonable" solution. Such a plan is most simply described as "pushing today's problems into the future."
Attempts to plug a $350 million hole in the Medicaid budget this year by borrowing it from the next year will likely lead to a budget hole next year, as a year-on-year $625 million increase is now budgeted to be a $125 million decrease.
If the borrowing plan passes, instead of Medicaid spending rising from $5.5 billion to $6.1 billion, it will be budgeted to decrease from $5.8 billion to $5.7 billion, a $426 million reduction and a $750 million swing in relative expectations.
Beshear calls this $750 million swing "a viable alternative to balance our Medicaid budget".
Fortunately, despite his bluster, Governor Beshear did not get all that he requested. Instead of the $166 million that the House borrowed for Medicaid benefits in its plan, the Senate plan that passed only brought $97 million forward from FY 2012. With less taken from FY 2012, FY 2012 faces a $186 million reduction instead of the $426 million described above.
It's possible that, by accepting the Senate budget, the Governor has actually been provided achievable goals which he would not have if the General Assembly had accepted the Governor's own plan.
Quite simply, David Williams may have saved the Governor from his own arrogance.
