...and folks blame the insurance company for high premiums...

GOD FORBID YOU SHOULD PAY FOR YOUR OWN MEDICAL CARE

Evidently we have a new controversy that has surfaced while I was out of town for a few days. The Georgia House of Representatives has passed a bill that would make it harder for Georgia's Medicaid program to recover the costs of providing medical care to some of Georgia's elderly citizens. These Georgia legislatures don't want the state Medicaid program to be able to recover dollars spent paying someone's nursing home bills from the estate of that patient. More specifically, the law says that Georgia Medicaid cannot get any of the first $100,000 of the proceeds of the sale of a patient's house after that patient has died. That money would go to the patient's heirs instead.

Now --- here's what that law really does. It forces the taxpayers of Georgia to pay for a person's nursing home care, even when that person has the assets to pay for that care, or a portion thereof, themselves. The Georgia house has passed a welfare bill. Essentially, this bill allows the children of a Medicaid nursing home patient to pass of $100,000 of the cost of their parents nursing home costs off to the taxpayers while they take that $100,000 and spend it on themselves.

Nice going, o wise and concerned public legislators. It's always easier to spend money out of someone else's purse (i.e., taxpayers), isn't it? It's one thing for the state to cover care for those who don't have the financial means themselves, but it's something altogether different to do so for those who could afford to pay a portion of it themselves ... (good grief!! What's wrong with people today? What happened to individual responsibility, anyway?).