Friday, March 13, 2020

Trump administration blocks states from using Medicaid to respond to coronavirus crisis

If there was any remaining doubt in your mind that the Trump administration is both unashamedly cruel and fantastically incompetent, this story from the Los Angeles Times should put it to rest:
Despite mounting pleas from California and other states, the Trump administration isn’t allowing states to use Medicaid more freely to respond to the coronavirus crisis by expanding medical services.
Donald Trump apparently does not realize that the corona virus does not discriminate on the basis of income.  It will infect and kill rich white people just as happily as it will poor black ones.  By blocking medicaid funding for coronavirus response the Trump administration is insuring that the virus will spread more widely than it otherwise would, and so the death toll will be higher that it otherwise would.  Some of dead will surely be people who voted for him.  But whether they supported Trump or not, the blood they cough up before they die will be on his tiny, pathologically oblivious and utterly incompetent hands.

5 comments:

Publius said...

Most Comprehensive Pandemic Response In US History

You shouldn't let the LA Times do your thinking for you.

The LA Times article could just as easily be written like this:

"March 13, 2020. Responding to Sates requests to waive rules for Medicaid eligibility,
President Trump today declared a national emergency, clearing the way for states to more quickly
enroll low-income Americans in Medicaid so they can get necessary testing and treatment if they are
exposed to the virus."


"This is in contrast to President Obama, who, when the H1N1 Swine Flu was detected in April 2009 in
the US, assigned the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, who has no background in medicine,
to lead the government's response to the outbreak. 'Swine flu is a cause for concern, but not a cause for alarm,'
Napolitano said, repeating words she has emphasized in recent days. 'We are simply in preparation mode.'
Napolitano was selected since President Obama had not yet filled the posts of secretary of Health and Human Services,
the Surgeon General, nor the director of the CDC. It would be nearly another six months before President Obama would
declare a national emergency on October 23, 2009. By that time, H1H1 Swine Flu cases existed in all
50 states (widespread in 41), and 1,000 Americans had already died."

Ron said...

Well, that's interesting. The Times changed the story without changing the URL and without (AFAICT) a disclaimer that the story has been changed. I would have thought that would be a journalistic no-no.

But at the time I linked to it, Trump had not yet declared the emergency. But he *had* restricted the use of medicaid funds.

And even the current version of the story has this:

"In previous emergencies, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the H1N1 flu outbreak, both Republican and Democratic administrations loosened Medicaid rules to empower states to meet surging needs.

But until Friday’s declaration by the president, the White House and senior federal health officials hadn’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic."

And BTW, it's pretty pathetic how the only way you Trumpsters can defend the president is to continually complain about how horrible Obama was.

Publius said...

Medicaid wavers are tied to the emergency declaration.

We only bring up Obama to illustrate your hypocrisy.

The actions taken by the Trump Administration are unprecedented. Stopping travel from China, and now Europe. Quarantines. Acceleration of vaccine development.

It’s not that clever to write a negatively slanted article. It can be done in any topic, as no human endevour is ever perfect. Negative articles can and have been written about the Apollo program, World War 2 strategy, the interstate highway system, and development of the polio vaccine. Reasonable assessment of those programs would be that of outstanding success — but you can find a flaw in anything and harp about it.

There are 2,170 corona virus cases in the US currently. California has 314 cases. Do you really think that California couldn’t take care of the fraction of those people who are poor without a Medicaid waver?

President Trump has declared a national emergency very early in this pandemic. Recall we first learned about COVID-19 on December 31.

Ron said...

> We only bring up Obama to illustrate your hypocrisy.

Excuse me? When was the last time you saw me say anything positive about Barack Obama?

And who is "we"?

> Do you really think that California couldn’t take care of the fraction of those people who are poor without a Medicaid waver?

Do you really think that the corona virus is going to stop at state borders or at the gates of the country club? This is a global pandemic. There are poor people everywhere.

> President Trump has declared a national emergency very early in this pandemic.

Am I supposed to be impressed by that? We have *no idea* how "early" it is. We have no idea how many people are infected in the U.S. And the reason we have no idea is because almost no one is getting tested, and people can be infected and contagious for *days* without showing symptoms. And the reason no one is getting tested is because the administration has actively sabotaged the apparatus that we once had in place to deal with pandemics. People were sounding the alarm as early as April of 2017.

Publius said...

Impotent California?

> Do you really think that California couldn’t take care of the fraction of those people who are poor without a Medicaid waiver?

@Ron:
Do you really think that the corona virus is going to stop at state borders or at the gates of the country club? This is a global pandemic. There are poor people everywhere.

You didn't answer the question. California has 314 corona virus cases. Say 30 of them were poor. Are you asserting that the great state of California could not afford to take care of those 30 people without a Medicaid waiver? Are you asserting the the great state of California could not take any action to help those 30 people without the help of the Federal government? What is stopping them?

> President Trump has declared a national emergency very early in this pandemic.

Am I supposed to be impressed by that? We have *no idea* how "early" it is.

Were certainly have a very good idea of how early it is. It was first revealed by China December 31. Here we are, 3 months later, and President Trump declared a state of emergency. There are only 2,170 cases in the US. It is early in the spread of the disease, if it follows a normal course and spreads for several months and only really comes under control when the population is vaccinated.

How, I could be wrong. If the virus stops spreading next month, then Trump's declaration of a national emergency would have "late" into the pandemic. Of course, you'd then have to credit President Trump's actions for stopping the pandemic.

We have no idea how many people are infected in the U.S. And the reason we have no idea is because almost no one is getting tested, and people can be infected and contagious for *days* without showing symptoms.

Testing for the corna virus isn't like inspecting parts off of an assembly line. It can't detect 1 virus particle in a person. So a widespread inspection of people is not done.

People who show symptoms consistent with a corona virus infection are tested -- to determine if they have COVID-19 vs. a different nasty virus.

Since people haven't been flooding emergency rooms with fever, cough, and shortness of breath, we have a pretty good idea that we're early in a potential pandemic.