Today, Governor Nixon cut $200 million dollars from the Missouri budget and announced 700 layoffs within the state. Medicaid payments are being reduced and Medicaid will stop taking on new clients for certain mental health services.
The names have changed, but the story sounds a lot like Governor Matt Blunt's situation in 2005, when he cut Medicaid funding. Will the media react the same way? We doubt it. Blunt was dragged over the coals for trying to balance the budget.
Reactions from some outlets, such as the St. Louis Post Dispatch, bordered on the hysteric.
Nixon Did What?
One St. Louis Post Dispatch article was titled "A Tale of Two States Waging War On the Working Poor: Missouri's Medicaid Shame" (9/21/05). The article's solution? Raise taxes, and create a new budget crisis by attaching children's health insurance to a regressive and declining revenue source (cigarette taxes). Reasoning was abandoned in the rush to bury Matt Blunt.
Another was "Two Standards? Two-Faced? Too Bad" (5/1/05). The title says it all about the tone of the piece.
These vitriolic articles were just the tip of the iceberg. The newspaper became a soapbox for one side of the issue - opposing views were only briefly mentioned and rarely elaborated.
So here's the question - now that two Governors in a row have cut Medicaid, will the press give them the same treatment?
The names have changed, but the story sounds a lot like Governor Matt Blunt's situation in 2005, when he cut Medicaid funding. Will the media react the same way? We doubt it. Blunt was dragged over the coals for trying to balance the budget.
Reactions from some outlets, such as the St. Louis Post Dispatch, bordered on the hysteric.
Nixon Did What?
One St. Louis Post Dispatch article was titled "A Tale of Two States Waging War On the Working Poor: Missouri's Medicaid Shame" (9/21/05). The article's solution? Raise taxes, and create a new budget crisis by attaching children's health insurance to a regressive and declining revenue source (cigarette taxes). Reasoning was abandoned in the rush to bury Matt Blunt.
Another was "Two Standards? Two-Faced? Too Bad" (5/1/05). The title says it all about the tone of the piece.
These vitriolic articles were just the tip of the iceberg. The newspaper became a soapbox for one side of the issue - opposing views were only briefly mentioned and rarely elaborated.
So here's the question - now that two Governors in a row have cut Medicaid, will the press give them the same treatment?
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