The answer may surprise you? Or maybe not. Does it matter? Should it matter? Is there a distinction between the leadership role of 50 elected governors vs. any elected officials? Either way, read the original here.Chuck Todd: Why Do Republicans Have More Women and Hispanic Governors?
2:02 PM, AUG 31, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER
The Weekly Standard:
THE BLOG
MSNBC host Chuck Todd asked the co-chair of the Democratic party's convention, L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, why there are more Republican women and Hispanic governors:
"Let me ask you though, this one question, why is it that the Republicans have elected more women governors and have two Hispanic governors and the Democrats don’t?," asked Todd. "Don’t have as many women governors and don’t have Hispanic governors, why do you think that is?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KkJbOJ-BpI
"Well we have a lot more legislators and mayors and Congress members that are women, that are Latino, that are Asian, that are African American. We have a much broader tent, a much broader representation of every walk of life, people from, you know, every ethnicity and race and sex," said Villaraigosa. "It’s true, they may have more governors but we have a much broader field when you look at all of the elected officials."
Friday, August 31, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012
Those who don't learn from history...
...are doomed to repeat it. Of course, POTUS doesn't believe it's a "doom", but rather, a success. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that someone with no business or private sector experience would deem this a success. And I shouldn't be surprised, that he'd want more of the same. Regardless of his intent, the great orator still says that what happened with the government takeover of GM was a success. I disagree.
Read the originals here and here.
Obama: Let's repeat auto industry success
By DONOVAN SLACK
Read the originals here and here.
Obama: Let's repeat auto industry success
By DONOVAN SLACK
Politico.com
8/9/12 2:18 PM EDT
PUEBLO, Colo. – President Obama, while villifying Mitt Romney for opposing the auto industry bailout, bragged about the success of his decision to provide government assistance and said he now wants to see every manufacturing industry come roaring back.
“I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.
“I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China, I want those jobs taking root in places like Pueblo,” Obama told a crowd gathered for a campaign rally at the Palace of Agriculture at the Colorado State Fairgrounds here.
He made the remarks while pushing for the renewal of a tax credit for wind energy manufacturing – something Romney opposes – and for the creation of credits for companies who bring jobs home from overseas, as well as the elimination of loopholes for offshoring.
“Gov. Romney brags about his private sector experience, but it was mostly invested in companies, some of which were called 'pioneers of outsourcing,'” Obama said. “I don’t want to be a pioneer of outsourcing. I want to insource.”
Clarification: This post was updated to reflect the president's intent to express his support for manufacturing success. An earlier version was unclear about his intent.
(This is the success, that the President refers to. -TheStrategeryBlog)
Report: U.S. Treasury ups expected bailout losses to $25 billion
Published: Monday, August 13, 2012, 4:00 PM Updated: Monday, August 13, 2012, 4:17 PM
By Michael Wayland
8/9/12 2:18 PM EDT
PUEBLO, Colo. – President Obama, while villifying Mitt Romney for opposing the auto industry bailout, bragged about the success of his decision to provide government assistance and said he now wants to see every manufacturing industry come roaring back.
“I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.
“I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China, I want those jobs taking root in places like Pueblo,” Obama told a crowd gathered for a campaign rally at the Palace of Agriculture at the Colorado State Fairgrounds here.
He made the remarks while pushing for the renewal of a tax credit for wind energy manufacturing – something Romney opposes – and for the creation of credits for companies who bring jobs home from overseas, as well as the elimination of loopholes for offshoring.
“Gov. Romney brags about his private sector experience, but it was mostly invested in companies, some of which were called 'pioneers of outsourcing,'” Obama said. “I don’t want to be a pioneer of outsourcing. I want to insource.”
Clarification: This post was updated to reflect the president's intent to express his support for manufacturing success. An earlier version was unclear about his intent.
(This is the success, that the President refers to. -TheStrategeryBlog)
Report: U.S. Treasury ups expected bailout losses to $25 billion
Published: Monday, August 13, 2012, 4:00 PM Updated: Monday, August 13, 2012, 4:17 PM
By Michael Wayland
Mlive.com
DETROIT, MI- The U.S. Treasury Department reportedly expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout involving General Motors and Chrysler.
A new report sent to Congress on Friday states the Obama administration now expects to lose about $25.1 billion, according to the Detroit News.
Aug. 13, DetroitNews.com: “The report may still underestimate the losses. The report covers predicted losses through May 31, when GM's stock price was $22.20 a share.”
The government still owns 500 million shares of the automaker as part of the 2009 auto bailout, which forced both automakers into government-backed bankruptcies.
To recoup all of its nearly $50 billion from GM, government officials would have to sell the remaining shares at about $53 per share.
Earlier this year, GM spokesman Selim Bingol said it is "anybody's guess" as to when the government will exit the automaker.
“The day will eventually come when the Treasury sells its GM stake,” he wrote in an executive blog post in March. “When is anybody’s guess (we have no say in the matter). Meantime, we are focused on designing, building and selling the best vehicles in the world.”
As of 3:45 p.m. today, the Detroit-based automaker’s stock [NYSE: GM] was trading for about $20.45 a share, a 38 percent decline from its initial offering price of $33 in November 2010. The stock hit a record low of $18.85 per share late last month.
During the company’s annual shareholder meeting in June, GM CEO and Chairman Dan Akerson said global economic uncertainty, along with its troubled European operations and pension obligations were hindering the stock’s performance.
“I regret that the stock has not done well post-IPO,” he said. “I will ensure you that we are all dedicated to improving that over the immediate to long-term.”
The Obama administration completely exited Chrysler last year after recovering $11.2 billion of its $12.5 billion bailout to the Auburn Hills-based automaker.
The $25 billion in losses remains less than its estimates of $30 billion in December 2009, according to the Detroit News.
DETROIT, MI- The U.S. Treasury Department reportedly expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout involving General Motors and Chrysler.
A new report sent to Congress on Friday states the Obama administration now expects to lose about $25.1 billion, according to the Detroit News.
Aug. 13, DetroitNews.com: “The report may still underestimate the losses. The report covers predicted losses through May 31, when GM's stock price was $22.20 a share.”
The government still owns 500 million shares of the automaker as part of the 2009 auto bailout, which forced both automakers into government-backed bankruptcies.
To recoup all of its nearly $50 billion from GM, government officials would have to sell the remaining shares at about $53 per share.
Earlier this year, GM spokesman Selim Bingol said it is "anybody's guess" as to when the government will exit the automaker.
“The day will eventually come when the Treasury sells its GM stake,” he wrote in an executive blog post in March. “When is anybody’s guess (we have no say in the matter). Meantime, we are focused on designing, building and selling the best vehicles in the world.”
As of 3:45 p.m. today, the Detroit-based automaker’s stock [NYSE: GM] was trading for about $20.45 a share, a 38 percent decline from its initial offering price of $33 in November 2010. The stock hit a record low of $18.85 per share late last month.
During the company’s annual shareholder meeting in June, GM CEO and Chairman Dan Akerson said global economic uncertainty, along with its troubled European operations and pension obligations were hindering the stock’s performance.
“I regret that the stock has not done well post-IPO,” he said. “I will ensure you that we are all dedicated to improving that over the immediate to long-term.”
The Obama administration completely exited Chrysler last year after recovering $11.2 billion of its $12.5 billion bailout to the Auburn Hills-based automaker.
The $25 billion in losses remains less than its estimates of $30 billion in December 2009, according to the Detroit News.
Friday, August 3, 2012
How would you like to make $0.25 on the dollar?
If you live in France, get ready. The best part is, it won't even make a difference economically or fiscally. It's simply a political middle finger to people who are rich. Read the original here.
In France, socialist Hollande makes the wealthiest pay
By Michael Birnbaum, Published: August 2
Washington Post
PARIS — In Washington, Republicans are bashing President Obama for inflicting “European-style socialism” on the United States.
Here in Paris, a genuine socialist took the presidential oath in May, and he has wasted no time implementing policies designed to make the rich pay more.
French President Francois Hollande has made good on a campaign pledge to make the wealthiest in France pay up to 75 percent income tax. The U.S. Congress, meanwhile, is debating an Obama proposal to allow the top tax rates to rise from 35 percent to nearly 40 percent.
Although the new taxes will not make a major dent in France’s budget, they have delighted the country’s labor unions and others who thought that former president Nicolas Sarkozy, nicknamed President Bling-Bling, gave the wealthy a pass as he called for deep cuts in government spending on the poor. But the rapidly rising tax rates have some businesses and investors saying that economic growth, forecast at a catatonic 0.2 percent this year, will further suffer.
The debate echoes the one playing out in Washington but also illustrates the deep divide — in policy and politics — between the United States and Europe as the countries struggle to crawl their way out of a slowing global economy. Policies that would be considered laughably extreme on the campaign trail in Ohio or Florida have found a champion in the Elysee Palace.
Hollande’s balancing act will test whether higher taxes can work in an age when money hops borders with the click of a mouse and nervous investors display little allegiance to individual countries. Many of France’s neighbors are focusing on cutting spending to balance their budgets rather than raising taxes. Hollande plans a mixture of both, and his aides are gambling that growth will result.
Constrained by a bad economy and commitments to balance the French budget by 2017, the plans are far from the rallying cry of stimulus-led growth on which Hollande based his campaign.
Many of the 17 countries that use the euroare fundamentally reevaluating the sustainability of their model. British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose country uses the pound, has said he would welcome investors and wealthy French people taking flight from Hollande’s taxes.
Hollande’s advisers say new taxes won’t scare away investors if the government follows up with convincing plans for how it will shrink spending, open the labor market and implement other business-friendly measures. In doing so, the advisers say, they hope to reduce France’s 10.2 percent unemployment rate while being fairer to the most vulnerable parts of society by putting the weight of service cuts and tax increases on the wealthy.
“If it’s necessary to have reforms, we will do them . . . based on fiscal elements that are just,” Hollande said in a recent television interview.
Uncertainty about the future
France is contemplating rates dramatically higher than those proposed by Obama. Paris’s conservative Figaro newspaper blazed in a front-page editorial last month about “confiscation” — dredging up memories of Soviet property seizures — reprinting a famous complaint from Tour de France great Bernard Hinault that three pumps of his bike pedal went to the government for every one dedicated to pushing himself forward in the race.
Although the 75 percent tax on earnings over $1.23 million a year, up from a previous top marginal rate of 48 percent, is more a political symbol than an economic measure — because it raises too little money to make a dent in France’s funding needs — analysts say it will help give Hollande political cover to cut government spending and open the labor market, making France more competitive with its neighbors. Parliament approved a one-off wealth tax on people whose assets total more than $1.6 million, and new taxes will raise $8.7 billion this year alone.
“From a strictly economic point of view, I wouldn’t recommend these policies. But that’s not what this is,” said Elie Cohen, an economist who has advised Sarkozy and Hollande. “This is clearly designed to create some kind of consensus in this country for structural reforms” — the kinds of measures otherwise known as austerity.
Many business owners say that they are waiting to see what will happen but that they are nervous about the future.
“We pay a pretty high level of tax already. The money we earned was not stolen,” said Stanislas de Bentzmann, co-chief executive of Devoteam, a computer systems company. “I switch on the radio and I hear the news that the government is doing the opposite of what I think it should do. In this kind of mood, investment decisions are not stimulated in this country.”
But he added that investors would probably tolerate temporary tax increases if there were a “real reorganization of the welfare state” at the same time. French Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac has said that the 75 percent income tax might be reduced once the country balances its budget.
Some economists say they think the prospect of French wealth and investment flowing out of the country is more bogeyman than real.
“French people don’t want to give up the level of service they’re getting,” said Fabrice Montagne, the chief French economist at Barclays Bank. “I wouldn’t overestimate” people leaving the country, he said.
A fragile moment
This is a fragile moment for France. Last month, Peugeot, Europe’s second largest car manufacturer, announced plans to shut down a plant and lay off 8,000 workers. Hollande has fought the plans, but he has little recourse, and his advisers are bracing for more bad news and layoffs in the fall. And with borrowing costs soaring in Spain and Italy, the euro zone’s overall prospects look dim.
Painful policy changes could be easier, with France temporarily benefiting from the fears about its neighbors. Its borrowing rates are close to record lows as nervous investors shift their euros from Spain and Italy to Germany and France, which are seen as more stable. But if markets become nervous about France’s future, rates could spike quickly.
Although France’s income taxes are high and getting higher, the country also has a national sales tax of 19.6 percent and a financial transactions tax and a social services tax of 7.5 percent of earnings, among others. French workers have long accepted the costs as the price of a government that offers cradle-to-grave social protections, but businesses have complained that the high cost of contributions to pension plans and the health-care system have made French workers more expensive than those elsewhere in Europe.
Hollande’s advisers agree there is a problem, and they have signaled that they will cut employers’ required social-safety-net contributions and shift more of the burden onto workers. Nor has the government increased every tax it can find: One of the new president’s first actions when he came into office was to halt a rise in the national sales tax that had been planned by Sarkozy, reasoning that it disproportionately hurt the poor and middle class.
Sarkozy’s associates have slammed the moves.
“I’m quite sure it will be a fiscal shock, which will be very bad for growth, and I’m quite sure that a lot of people who have money or run firms are looking at going outside France,” former finance minister Francois Baroin said in a telephone interview.
For now, with Paris emptying for summer holidays, shuttered businesses with signs saying they’ll be back in September are a reminder that some traditions are hallowed on both sides of the political aisle.
In France, socialist Hollande makes the wealthiest pay
By Michael Birnbaum, Published: August 2
Washington Post
PARIS — In Washington, Republicans are bashing President Obama for inflicting “European-style socialism” on the United States.
Here in Paris, a genuine socialist took the presidential oath in May, and he has wasted no time implementing policies designed to make the rich pay more.
French President Francois Hollande has made good on a campaign pledge to make the wealthiest in France pay up to 75 percent income tax. The U.S. Congress, meanwhile, is debating an Obama proposal to allow the top tax rates to rise from 35 percent to nearly 40 percent.
Although the new taxes will not make a major dent in France’s budget, they have delighted the country’s labor unions and others who thought that former president Nicolas Sarkozy, nicknamed President Bling-Bling, gave the wealthy a pass as he called for deep cuts in government spending on the poor. But the rapidly rising tax rates have some businesses and investors saying that economic growth, forecast at a catatonic 0.2 percent this year, will further suffer.
The debate echoes the one playing out in Washington but also illustrates the deep divide — in policy and politics — between the United States and Europe as the countries struggle to crawl their way out of a slowing global economy. Policies that would be considered laughably extreme on the campaign trail in Ohio or Florida have found a champion in the Elysee Palace.
Hollande’s balancing act will test whether higher taxes can work in an age when money hops borders with the click of a mouse and nervous investors display little allegiance to individual countries. Many of France’s neighbors are focusing on cutting spending to balance their budgets rather than raising taxes. Hollande plans a mixture of both, and his aides are gambling that growth will result.
Constrained by a bad economy and commitments to balance the French budget by 2017, the plans are far from the rallying cry of stimulus-led growth on which Hollande based his campaign.
Many of the 17 countries that use the euroare fundamentally reevaluating the sustainability of their model. British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose country uses the pound, has said he would welcome investors and wealthy French people taking flight from Hollande’s taxes.
Hollande’s advisers say new taxes won’t scare away investors if the government follows up with convincing plans for how it will shrink spending, open the labor market and implement other business-friendly measures. In doing so, the advisers say, they hope to reduce France’s 10.2 percent unemployment rate while being fairer to the most vulnerable parts of society by putting the weight of service cuts and tax increases on the wealthy.
“If it’s necessary to have reforms, we will do them . . . based on fiscal elements that are just,” Hollande said in a recent television interview.
Uncertainty about the future
France is contemplating rates dramatically higher than those proposed by Obama. Paris’s conservative Figaro newspaper blazed in a front-page editorial last month about “confiscation” — dredging up memories of Soviet property seizures — reprinting a famous complaint from Tour de France great Bernard Hinault that three pumps of his bike pedal went to the government for every one dedicated to pushing himself forward in the race.
Although the 75 percent tax on earnings over $1.23 million a year, up from a previous top marginal rate of 48 percent, is more a political symbol than an economic measure — because it raises too little money to make a dent in France’s funding needs — analysts say it will help give Hollande political cover to cut government spending and open the labor market, making France more competitive with its neighbors. Parliament approved a one-off wealth tax on people whose assets total more than $1.6 million, and new taxes will raise $8.7 billion this year alone.
“From a strictly economic point of view, I wouldn’t recommend these policies. But that’s not what this is,” said Elie Cohen, an economist who has advised Sarkozy and Hollande. “This is clearly designed to create some kind of consensus in this country for structural reforms” — the kinds of measures otherwise known as austerity.
Many business owners say that they are waiting to see what will happen but that they are nervous about the future.
“We pay a pretty high level of tax already. The money we earned was not stolen,” said Stanislas de Bentzmann, co-chief executive of Devoteam, a computer systems company. “I switch on the radio and I hear the news that the government is doing the opposite of what I think it should do. In this kind of mood, investment decisions are not stimulated in this country.”
But he added that investors would probably tolerate temporary tax increases if there were a “real reorganization of the welfare state” at the same time. French Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac has said that the 75 percent income tax might be reduced once the country balances its budget.
Some economists say they think the prospect of French wealth and investment flowing out of the country is more bogeyman than real.
“French people don’t want to give up the level of service they’re getting,” said Fabrice Montagne, the chief French economist at Barclays Bank. “I wouldn’t overestimate” people leaving the country, he said.
A fragile moment
This is a fragile moment for France. Last month, Peugeot, Europe’s second largest car manufacturer, announced plans to shut down a plant and lay off 8,000 workers. Hollande has fought the plans, but he has little recourse, and his advisers are bracing for more bad news and layoffs in the fall. And with borrowing costs soaring in Spain and Italy, the euro zone’s overall prospects look dim.
Painful policy changes could be easier, with France temporarily benefiting from the fears about its neighbors. Its borrowing rates are close to record lows as nervous investors shift their euros from Spain and Italy to Germany and France, which are seen as more stable. But if markets become nervous about France’s future, rates could spike quickly.
Although France’s income taxes are high and getting higher, the country also has a national sales tax of 19.6 percent and a financial transactions tax and a social services tax of 7.5 percent of earnings, among others. French workers have long accepted the costs as the price of a government that offers cradle-to-grave social protections, but businesses have complained that the high cost of contributions to pension plans and the health-care system have made French workers more expensive than those elsewhere in Europe.
Hollande’s advisers agree there is a problem, and they have signaled that they will cut employers’ required social-safety-net contributions and shift more of the burden onto workers. Nor has the government increased every tax it can find: One of the new president’s first actions when he came into office was to halt a rise in the national sales tax that had been planned by Sarkozy, reasoning that it disproportionately hurt the poor and middle class.
Sarkozy’s associates have slammed the moves.
“I’m quite sure it will be a fiscal shock, which will be very bad for growth, and I’m quite sure that a lot of people who have money or run firms are looking at going outside France,” former finance minister Francois Baroin said in a telephone interview.
For now, with Paris emptying for summer holidays, shuttered businesses with signs saying they’ll be back in September are a reminder that some traditions are hallowed on both sides of the political aisle.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Supply & Demand is a fairly straightforward principle
Unfortunately, free medical care is a limited commodity, and as a commodity, subject to the economical principles of supply and demand. If the demand goes way up, the supply will be even more limited. I'm not saying people shouldn't have healthcare. I'm questioning why people are surprised with developments like this one. Read the original here.
Rationing Begins: States Limiting Drug Prescriptions for Medicaid Patients
By Melanie Hunter
July 30, 2012
(CNSNews.com) – Sixteen states have set a limit on the number of prescription drugs they will cover for Medicaid patients, according to Kaiser Health News.
Seven of those states, according to Kaiser Health News, have enacted or tightened those limits in just the last two years.
Medicaid is a federal program that is carried out in partnership with state governments. It forms an important element of President Barack Obama's health-care plan because under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--AKA Obamcare--a larger number of people will be covered by Medicaid, as the income cap is raised for the program.
With both the expanded Medicaid program and the federal subsidy for health-care premiums that will be available to people earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level, a larger percentage of the population will be wholly or partially dependent on the government for their health care under Obamacare than are now.
In Alabama, Medicaid patients are now limited to one brand-name drug, and HIV and psychiatric drugs are excluded.
Illinois has limited Medicaid patients to just four prescription drugs as a cost-cutting move, and patients who need more than four must get permission from the state.
Speaking on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Monday, Phil Galewitz, staff writer for Kaiser Health News, said the move “only hurts a limited number of patients.”
“Drugs make up a fair amount of costs for Medicaid. A lot of states have said a lot of drugs are available in generics where they cost less, so they see this sort of another move to push patients to take generics instead of brand,” Galewitz said.
“It only hurts a limited number of patients, ‘cause obviously it hurts patients who are taking multiple brand name drugs in the case of Alabama, Illinois. Some of the states are putting the limits on all drugs. It’s another place to cut. It doesn’t hurt everybody, but it could hurt some,” he added.
Galewitz said the move also puts doctors and patients in a “difficult position.”
“Some doctors I talked to would work with patients with asthma and diabetes, and sometimes it’s tricky to get the right drugs and the right dosage to figure out how to control some of this disease, and just when they get it right, now the state is telling them that, ‘Hey, you’re not going to get all this coverage. You may have to switch to a generic or find another way,’” he said.
Arkansas, California, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia have all placed caps on the number of prescription drugs Medicaid patients can get.
“Some people say it’s a matter of you know states are throwing things up against the wall to see what might work, so states have tried, they’ve also tried formularies where they’ll pick certain brand name drugs over other drugs. So states try a whole lot of different things. They’re trying different ways of paying providers to try to maybe slow the costs down,” Galewitz said.
“So it seems like Medicaid’s sort of been one big experiment over the last number of years for states to try to control costs, and it’s an ongoing battle, and I think drugs is just now one of the … latest issues. And it’s a relatively recent thing, only in the last 10 years have we really seen states put these limits on monthly drugs,” he added.
Rationing Begins: States Limiting Drug Prescriptions for Medicaid Patients
By Melanie Hunter
July 30, 2012
(CNSNews.com) – Sixteen states have set a limit on the number of prescription drugs they will cover for Medicaid patients, according to Kaiser Health News.
Seven of those states, according to Kaiser Health News, have enacted or tightened those limits in just the last two years.
Medicaid is a federal program that is carried out in partnership with state governments. It forms an important element of President Barack Obama's health-care plan because under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--AKA Obamcare--a larger number of people will be covered by Medicaid, as the income cap is raised for the program.
With both the expanded Medicaid program and the federal subsidy for health-care premiums that will be available to people earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level, a larger percentage of the population will be wholly or partially dependent on the government for their health care under Obamacare than are now.
In Alabama, Medicaid patients are now limited to one brand-name drug, and HIV and psychiatric drugs are excluded.
Illinois has limited Medicaid patients to just four prescription drugs as a cost-cutting move, and patients who need more than four must get permission from the state.
Speaking on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Monday, Phil Galewitz, staff writer for Kaiser Health News, said the move “only hurts a limited number of patients.”
“Drugs make up a fair amount of costs for Medicaid. A lot of states have said a lot of drugs are available in generics where they cost less, so they see this sort of another move to push patients to take generics instead of brand,” Galewitz said.
“It only hurts a limited number of patients, ‘cause obviously it hurts patients who are taking multiple brand name drugs in the case of Alabama, Illinois. Some of the states are putting the limits on all drugs. It’s another place to cut. It doesn’t hurt everybody, but it could hurt some,” he added.
Galewitz said the move also puts doctors and patients in a “difficult position.”
“Some doctors I talked to would work with patients with asthma and diabetes, and sometimes it’s tricky to get the right drugs and the right dosage to figure out how to control some of this disease, and just when they get it right, now the state is telling them that, ‘Hey, you’re not going to get all this coverage. You may have to switch to a generic or find another way,’” he said.
Arkansas, California, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia have all placed caps on the number of prescription drugs Medicaid patients can get.
“Some people say it’s a matter of you know states are throwing things up against the wall to see what might work, so states have tried, they’ve also tried formularies where they’ll pick certain brand name drugs over other drugs. So states try a whole lot of different things. They’re trying different ways of paying providers to try to maybe slow the costs down,” Galewitz said.
“So it seems like Medicaid’s sort of been one big experiment over the last number of years for states to try to control costs, and it’s an ongoing battle, and I think drugs is just now one of the … latest issues. And it’s a relatively recent thing, only in the last 10 years have we really seen states put these limits on monthly drugs,” he added.
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