Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

$594 million will arrive on Wednesday

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The Obama administration announced that $15 billion of Medicaid funding from the stimulus bill will be released to the states on Wednesday.  Of that amount, MA is scheduled to receive a little over $594 million.

Anyone know what the restrictions are with respect to this money?

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  1. From Yahoo! Answers:

    It’s a cliche, based back in the days where people didn’t often have much actual cash, so when some people happened to get a lot of cash at one time, they didn’t know how to handle what seemed to them like a huge amount of money. Like when some farmers would get paid for a whole year’s crop all at one time, or a cowboy get paid after a cattle drive, or a “prodigal son” taking all his inheritance/savings at once and leaving home for the first time. If the person was not used to this sort of thing, he might be tempted to treat himself to a few luxuries, and so he would need to be reminded by a more prudent person not to spend it all in one place (saloon, restaurant, gambling hall, hotel, often all under the same roof).

    Which is why we now (sarcastically) tell someone who has found a coin, don’t spend it all in one place.

    <

    p>I’m not being very helpful here, just trying to inject some homespun levity, I guess. I do hope we spend it wisely in many places. Solomonic* decisions required.

    <

    p>*Exhibiting or requiring the exercise of great wisdom, especially in making difficult decisions.
    -thefreedictionary.com

    • This also means that since this is one-time money, it will need to be used on one-time projects, not ongoing expenses.

      <

      p>A lot of people never seem to get that. We will hear cries of “why do we have to increase the gas tax when we’re about to get stimulus dollars”. I think Howie Carr was pushing that one last week.

  2. It’s Medicaid money. I assume it has to be spent on Medicaid – help for the unemployed, which is why the need for Medicaid money has gone up.

    • there are no provisions that require coverage for certain procedures, etc.  States and still restrict payments as they do now.  The only thing that is required is that the state cannot add further restrictions on eligibility.  I think they have to maintain the same eligibility requirements from last year (from last June).  If they made changes to add additional restrictions then they need to change them back prior to receiving money.  But they are not precluded from receiving money, they just need to change it back.  

  3. Massachusetts already spends a lot of money on health care for Medicaid recipients, does it not?  And if so, much of that money comes from the general fund, which is sufferring this year from greatly reduced tax revenues.  Anyone know how big that hole is?  Because I assume the first thing MA would do with this money is use it to cover all of the Medicaid funding that would normally come from the state’s general fund, and use that in turn to plug the hole in our budget, to reduce the number of cuts we need to make elsewhere.  Does this make sense?

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