NYT: Rulings (by courts) Trim Legal Leeway Given Medicaid Recipients

[DeepModem Mom]

Rulings Trim Legal Leeway Given Medicaid Recipients
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: August 15, 2005


WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 - In a series of rulings, federal judges are limiting the ability of poor people to turn to the courts to fight for Medicaid benefits to which they believe they are entitled.

The judges, following guidance from the Supreme Court, are ruling that Medicaid recipients cannot use the courts to enforce a provision of the law that says they should have the same access to health care services as "the general population."

While the federal courts are still full of Medicaid litigation, it is proving more difficult for beneficiaries to prevail.

Medicaid provides health insurance to more than 50 million low-income people. The court decisions are raising questions about what it means to have health insurance, if the terms of such coverage cannot be enforced.

The rulings, in more than a dozen cases, affect millions of people and involve a wide range of services like nursing home care, home health visits and preventive care for children....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/politics/politicsspecial1/15medicaid.html?hp&ex=1124078400&en=fb40ab5fb588822f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[rodeodance]

1. no money for health care is the message.

[Child_Of_Isis]

2. Only for wars! n/t

[undergroundpanther]

3. Well if they will not fund medicare

We should stop funding the Pentagon.Stop feeding the corporations.Just stop buying and working.Stop cooperating.Stop doing ANYTHING"productive".Cause if Bush and his psycho asshjole greedy pig chickenhawk con men buddies Doesen't care about us,why should we care about THEM? They could not handle life as a poor person.They are bullies weak incompetant manipulators parasites.If we don't play thier game,they make no more capital gains.

[Child_Of_Isis]

4. Just stop buying and working

See, that is where they have us. We have children, homes, etc. Do we have a choice anymore? That is why families and marriage is so important to our government. It keeps us in the pit.

[loftycity]

7. A truthful to the point statement--good one!

[WildClarySage]

5. Wait a damn second.

How can courts rule that people cannot use courts to enforce laws? What good are laws then? What good are courts then? What is the purpose of legislative bodies?

[undergroundpanther]

6. good point

So if there is no law..who will win?

The biggest bully.. richest,meanest gang.
Unless those of us who do not want to be dominated Stand WITH each other,and do not tolerate bullies con men,or sociopaths in our midst.
Yes we have homes families but if the law will not defend us from predatory people we are not obligated to obey or pay predatorty people either.

Society is a series of contracts,If Bush wants to brreak the lawws enforcing the social contract for themselves but still have us obligated..well I think they will have another thing coming.

[billyoc]

10. The purpose of the courts is to protect the interests

of the employing class. This ruling is only the latest in a long series of edicts stratifying the caste system in the US.

[Judi Lynn]

8. I hope there'll be a backlash to this. It's another deadly step

taken by the right-wing to remove all services, funneling the U.S. Treasury into war-related projects which benefit the villains who have laid waste to this country every time a Republican has been in the White House since Eisenhower.

It's got to stop. We've got to get stronger CongressDems.

[barb162]

9. The problem is these are all little steps against the common good

hardly noticed in the news. Every day there seems to be a new story like this, a cut here, a cut there. Most people just read it and go on to the next story because it doesn't affect them precisely at that time in their life.

[DeepModem Mom]

11. I often think about that -- enormous change...

accomplished little by little, largely unnoticed (or understood) by the general public.

[barb162]

12. Oh yes, the bankruptcy laws,

the credit card minimum increases, social services being cut all over the place, etc. The firefighting in the West this past week had a blurb on TV because there aren't enough National Guard for the governors to call up, seeing how so many are in Iraq. Unless you are using the social services, the charities, the food pantries, you most often don't know they are turning people away. I also notice things happening in the states where malpractice laws are being changed to make it harder for victims to sue and then there are caps placed on settlements where there were none before. But you will notice business to business lawsuits NEVER have any caps placed on their settlements. The legal changes against the people, the consumer, are really, really changing against the people and for business. The damned government has basically turned against the peoplea nd lined itself up with business. And it all just seems to slip under the radar. I think because monkeyboy placed so much emphasis on Social Security (a totally bogus issue that it needs fixing), he was able to slip all these other things in.There's so many other things too like that story about Phoenix a few weeks ago that people were dying from the heat because they weren't opening the shelters. And the list goes on.