Crowell votes to restore cuts in Medicaid

During debate this week on legislation overhauling the state's Medicaid system, state Sen. Jason Crowell broke ranks with his fellow Republicans to support an attempt to reverse all the cuts since 2002 in the taxpayer-supported health-care program.

The attempt failed on a 16-18 vote, but Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau, said his vote doesn't show a lack of support for the bill establishing MO HealthNet, Gov. Matt Blunt's plan for revamping Medicaid. Instead, he said, the vote was cast because the state needs to take strong steps to "make sure all Missourians have access to meaningful health care."

The major portion of the Medicaid cuts that would have been repealed by the amendment, which was sponsored by Senate Democratic leader Maida Coleman of St. Louis, were enacted in 2005. The bill making the cuts began its legislative path in a committee chaired by Crowell, who supported the action at the time as crucial to saving the program.

Two Republicans who joined with Crowell to support Coleman's amendment, Sens. Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, and Rob Mayer, R-Dexter, opposed the 2005 cuts.

The state faced a deficit of $300 million, and in a statement issued in March 2005, Crowell said the state had a "swollen welfare health-care system." The situation was dire, Crowell said at the time, and the decisions were "tremendously difficult and burdensome."

The state has moved from facing a $300 million deficit to a surplus of $500 million. Restoring the Medicaid cuts from 2005 would consume most of that surplus, about $312 million.

The 2005 bill saved Medicaid for those who needed it most while bailing the state out of a big hole, Crowell said Friday. "It was absolutely the right vote that provided health care to Missourians."

Reading his vote to repeal the cuts as a reversal of that position "would be entirely and totally wrong," he said.

The plan Crowell wants to enact to expand access to health insurance that would allow individuals and small businesses to pool their buying power. All employees in agencies and institutions supported by taxpayers, from the University of Missouri to the Department of Conservation and regular state workers, would be included in a single health plan. Private workers who can't afford health insurance would be able to purchase subsidized plans from the pool of public employees.

"I have been meeting with individuals of the Missouri Hospital Association and the Missouri Foundation for Health and looking to work that out," Crowell said. "I am trying to create a pooling authority to be a building block."

The bill creating MO HealthNet will provide the framework for implementing improved management and better care through the state-supported health system, Crowell said. "I will support and vote for Missouri HealthNet," Crowell said. "It has an overarching philosophy of trying to manage illness before it becomes a chronic illness, to move from an 1960s model to a 21st-century model."

rkeller@semissourian.com

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