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Probably. But It'll Resurface. |
Daugaard
himself had even come up with a plan to bring it into South Dakota, an effort
he abandoned after he apparently was convinced that a Trump administration
could easily overturn ACA. Trump's vision has of course been
exposed as a hallucination, but Governor Daugaard is dutifully following up on
his responsibilities and political affiliations by giving Republican leadership
the attention and lip service it merits. His Chief of Staff and son-in-law
Tony Venhuizen was quick to address the Medicaid expansion funding issue a few
days ago, when he told the Mitchell Daily Republic that
one of the main reasons Daugaard supports the latest GOP plan is that it
brings "funding parity" between expansion and non-expansion
states.
This is
actually a back-door way of acknowledging what has been obvious for
years: states like South Dakota, stubborn as they've been in their
resistance to Medicaid expansion, have really been getting the short-end of the
stick when it comes to federal healthcare spending. But by going
along with this concept of federal block granting, South Dakota effectively
gains what it has been giving up by disdaining expansion. Block grant
money would amount to a yearly gain of nearly $1 thousand per resident (almost
a billion dollars) to South Dakota according to a New York Times analysis. That would
more than make up for the money we've been leaving on the table up to now.
And, as a business-type who sees the value of
money pouring into the state, regardless of whether the source is named
Obamacare or Trumpcare, I love the idea. The only caveat now
is the matter of trust that began this missive. We've seen what's
happened to federally-supported and sanctioned programs in this state during
the past decade or so, and it hasn't been pretty. EB-5 and Gear-Up have
set pretty poor examples
of our current leadership's ability to manage Washington-sanctioned programs. Before the Daugaard administration gets
totally wound up in its enthusiasm for this block grant or the next one that’s
likely to be proposed, some assurances that another fiasco won’t materialize
are in order.