Thursday, August 21, 2014

Walker myth about Government Reneging on Medicaid Funding continues....

Way back on February 23, 2014, PolitiFact corrected Scott Walker's claim the government had renege on Medicaid funding before, and will again. 

As you can see by this screen capture, he was wrong. Even with this public shaming, what could be described as an outright lie, wasn't enough to change his opinion or penetrate the Walker campaign bubble.

For once, could we just admit Walker knows he's lying about Medicaid. I know, it's hard to imagine someone playing a cruel trick like this on so many families in need of health care.

As PolitiFact pointed out to Walker in February:
There’s a major problem in Walker’s contention.

The federal share -- known as the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, or FMAP -- fluctuates annually and varies from state to state based on a formula dating to Medicaid’s inception in 1965.

That formula is "designed so that the federal government pays a larger portion of Medicaid costs in states with lower per-capita incomes relative to the national average (and vice versa for states with higher per-capita incomes)," a Congressional Research Service paper noted in 2013.

In other words, the standard federal share of Medicaid costs is not promised or guaranteed to hold steady; it must only stay between the statutory minimum of 50 percent and maximum of 83 percent.

It has gone up notably in some recent years as well. In fact, Wisconsin saw its federal rate rise from 2009 to 2010, and also got a big additional bump to more than 70 percent for almost three years under the federal stimulus law and a subsequent legislative action -- both of which applied nationally.
When many of us say Walker is a sociopath, we're being sincere. Just look at his calm almost listless demeanor as he repeats this outright lie. Anyone really think he's protecting us from the expanded "risk" of lost funding? Post Crescent:



Republicans, if elected, will cut funding. That's the underlying message.

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