Cyndi Mouw is a widow after her husband of 30 years is moved from her care to a nursing home to save the private firm handling Medicaid for Iowa some money.
September 21, 2017

How many states will take their Medicaid block grant from Trumpcare part infinity and turn the "problem" of disabled patients over to a private company for a flat fee?

And more to the point, how many people will die as a result?

Iowa is finding out.

The Des Moines Register tells the story of Cyndi Mouw and her late husband Todd. Todd lived in his home for THIRTY YEARS as a quadriplegic -- Iowa privatized Medicaid and private company forced him into a nursing home where he died in less than six months.

His widow married him in his wheelchair. She's cared for him her whole adult life. What the hell.

The Register wrote an editorial slamming Medicaid privatization as a failure:

Numerous Iowa families have reported cuts to services since former Gov. Terry Branstad handed over Medicaid management to three private companies last year. The problems for people with the most severe disabilities have gotten more media attention and prompted a federal lawsuit against the state.

The complaint alleges privatized Medicaid is depriving about 15,000 disabled Iowans with the legal right to live safely outside of care facilities. Though the former governor said their services would not change for at least two years, almost immediately people were told they would receive less care in their homes....

State-managed Medicaid did not force disabled Iowans into expensive, out-of-state institutions where they died a few weeks later. It tried to keep people in their homes.

Trumpcare gives cash-strapped states a block grant of money to spend on whatever, based on whether that money will buy a Senator's vote for "Let 'em die" Lindsey Graham. How they spend it is up to the leadership of that state.

How many red states will embrace privatization as the cure-all? Especially those that get the most money because they refused to expand Medicaid in the first place?

Republicans' approach to health "care" is to take it away, period.

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