Ron Amundson’s Political Blog

Only 9 folks voted against restoring GAMC… my cynical, but also practical nature suggests the only reason Republicans voted for it, as they knew it would be vetoed. Of course, the truth will come out when it comes to the override vote. Of course, I could be wrong.

Its not a simple call by any means. GAMC is an incredibly spendy program which likely impacts “the least of these” more so than nearly any other legislation. By the same token, a cursory read seems to indicate it approximates a level of care only enjoyed by key employees at F100 firms, and or politicians. In addition, within the population of folks on GMAC, there may be a few folks whose lives depends upon having said level of care.

Thats the tough part…. as in effect rolling said folks into a transition plan, and finally into a lower level of care may cause injury, and possibly loss of life. It wont be overt by any means, but more so, with change, balls will get dropped, and its almost a surety, a few folks will drop through the cracks.

By the same token, throwing money at a likely very inefficient program which serves a likely much larger population than it was ever intended to serve… well thats not prudent either. Such practices are not long term sustainable, and an orderly wind-down/transition is more prudent than running such programs into the ground due to even greater utilization combined with slowly dwindling funding an care levels as time passes.

And there in lies the problem…an orderly transition. Being the state/county government was unable to timely handle even the simple case of H1N1 vaccine distribution, how on earth are they going to manage a major transition in health care without folks being injured or dieing? Fortunately there is a 6 month transition period, which appears to be mostly a paperwork type thing, but after that…. egads.

What Ronald Reagan said all those years back is all too true.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’