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Collapse: It's the best description of Iowa's Medicaid network and Gov. Terry Branstad's ideological crusade to gut the program.

Providers have raged since Branstad this year privatized the bulk of the program that provides health care insurance for roughly 20 percent of Iowans. Anecdotes about slow payments and rejected services are piled high. Democrats demanded more oversight of handover of the $4.2 billion to a trio of private insurers. In March, federal regulators urged Branstad to postpone the shift, citing the state's unreadiness. But Branstad, preferring ideological purity over reality, wasn't having any of it.

Iowa will save more than $100 million this fiscal year, Branstad insisted, even as the insurers themselves reported huge losses and demanded more cash.

Branstad's narrative crumbled earlier this month, however. That's when The Des Moines Register got its hands on internal memos and emails between state officials and the insurers.

CliffsNotes: Branstad's partisan pipe-dream is something of a cash-bleeding nightmare. In fact, the state's October offer to pony up more cash incensed executives at the insurance providers tasked with managing this mess.