Call Gov. Matt Bevin's Medicaid plan what it is: 'Kentucky Death' | Joseph Gerth

Gov. Matt Bevin’s new health care program is a gawd-awful acronym that really doesn’t even begin to tell you what it does. He calls it “Helping to Engage and Achieve Long Term Health,” or “Kentucky HEALTH.”

It ought to be called “Kentucky Death.”

This is not hysteria. It’s not hyperbole.

It’s fact.

Between 100,000 and half a million Kentuckians will lose health insurance in the next year because of Bevin’s new Medicaid program, which requires recipients to pay for Medicaid and for some of them to get jobs or work as volunteers.

That will mean suffering and that will mean death.

If the program is instituted as Kentucky’s heartless governor wants, it’s estimated that 100,000 people will lose coverage under the plan.

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If any portion of the plan is found to violate the law and is struck down by a judge, Bevin has issued an executive order to wipe out Kentucky’s Medicaid expansion enacted under his predecessor, Gov. Steve Beshear. That would mean no health care coverage for nearly 500,000 of your neighbors.

That’s shameful.

Bevin's plan means between 100,000 and 500,000 Kentuckians will go without colon cancer screenings. In any given year, 40.1 out of every 100,000 Americans are diagnosed with colon cancer. (Kentucky ranks first in the number of new colon cancer cases.)

It means between 50,000 and 250,000 women will go without mammograms. In any given year, 124.9 out of every 100,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer.

It means between 50,000 and 250,000 men will go without prostate cancer screenings. In any given year, 119.8 of every 100,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer.

All this at a time when the budget that Bevin proposed on Tuesday zeroes out state funding for programs that pay for mammograms and colonoscopies for people who don’t have insurance.

People will die as a result of these diseases and others when early intervention would have given them a much better chance of survival.

Some will be deprived of blood pressure medication. Some won’t have tests that will suggest heart problems. People will go without diabetes being treated.

Death, death and more death.

And the saddest part is, we’re not even sure why we’re doing this.

In recent television interviews, Bevin declined to answer how much money this will save and said that that’s not the reason he’s doing this.

“The intent is not to save money,” he told Ali Velshi of MSNBC. “The intent is to get people engaged in their own health outcomes.”

On PBS, Bevin said that placing restrictions on Medicaid will give recipients “dignity and self-respect.”

The idea seems to be that people will somehow turn their lives around by paying for health insurance with money they don't have or by finding jobs that don't exist or by volunteering at agencies to which they have no transportation.

And let's not forget that many of the people who received coverage under the Medicaid expansion already do have jobs.

"What if it moves (the needle) for one individual and one individual's children?" Bevin told Velshi. "Think about the trajectory for that family into the future."

But in Bevin’s executive order, which is essentially an ultimatum that threatens to cut off thousands of people, he tells just the opposite story.

It’s not about dignity. It’s not about self-respect. It’s about money.

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In it, he said, if any part of the plan is struck down, the state “will not be able to afford to continue to operate its Medicaid expansion program.”

In another section, Bevin says that any delay in implementing the full plan “will cause fiscal harm to the Commonwealth.”

He fails to understand the fiscal harm that premature death causes to the Commonwealth or to families.

To paraphrase the governor, what if his plan causes death for one individual or one individual's children. Think about the trajectory for that family.

The fact is, there is no dignity in dying. Only death.

The same is true for Bevin's Medicaid plan.

No dignity.

Just death.

Joseph Gerth's column runs on most Sundays and at various times throughout the week. He can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courier-journal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/josephg.