Cheers to Jo: Media Finally Call the Blunt Bluff on Medicaid Cuts

A week ago, we asked the Missouri media to stop blindly echoing the Blunt administration's rhetoric about "expanding" Medicaid with reform proposals because such claims were, well, false.

The governor knows he tarnished the public's view of his
administration when he cut more than 100,000 from Medicaid in 2005. He
hopes to remediate his image now with shell-game Medicaid "reform"
which would leave the grand majority of those 100,000 without coverage.
The media should not become a pawn in the Blunt strategy to muddle his
complicity in the growth of the number of uninsured by encouraging his
rhetorical gambit.

Today, we've no choice but to give credit where it's due. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for Jo Mannies of the Post-Dispatch. For today's story Jo asked the question others had dared not, and put the Guv's answer in her lede...

Gov. Matt Blunt acknowledged Thursday that his proposed health care
changes would restore Medicaid coverage to only a few thousand of the
roughly 100,000 Missourians removed from the rolls last year.

Blunt, with the help of a largely complicit capitol press corps, had been able to pull the wool over the eyes of Missourians by talking about his "reform" measure while simultaneously touting "expanded" access to health insurance. But Jo Mannies' story makes the racket clear. The health care programs which Blunt hopes will aid his crumbling governorship are now exposed as little more than stopgaps which won't solve the crisis of the uninsured. Mannies explains:

The governor said he expected that the revamped Medicaid program, which
will be called MO HealthNet, would cover about 10,000 more people than
it does now. But only a few thousand of them, he said, had been covered
by Medicaid before the cuts. The rest are people, such as foster
children ages 18-21, who hadn't previously been covered, he said.

In other words, Blunt is attempting to undo the damage he did to himself with Medicaid cuts by proposing measures that would do almost nothing to undo those cuts. Blunt became incredibly unpopular with Missourians because he took health insurance from more than 100,000 of his most vulnerable constituents. Now he foolishly believes that he can turn public perception of his term by recommending changes that leave an overwhelming portion of those most vulnerable still without coverage. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the Governor to tell us such things about his plan unless our media force him to do so.

Today, we should be thankful that at least one reporter did her job on that front. Good work, Jo.