A Source Tipster stepped up to point out that Gov. Jay Nixon has had legislation sitting on his desk for months regarding Missouri’s authority over its share of federal healthcare dollars, and that he is planning on vetoing the bill tomorrow, apparently without comment.
The bill, also passed in Texas and already law in Oklahoma and Georgia, would allow states to form their own healthcare “compacts” to save money and run more efficiently:
The bill allows [the states] to ask the federal government for permission to take its share of funding and join other states in creating a compact, a healthcare program free of federal requirements.
A more in-depth description:
The health care compact isn't a health policy reform—it's a governance reform. If approved, it would give states the authority to determine how to spend their federal health care dollars, empowering member states to provide health care services (including Medicare and Medicaid) for their own citizens. It places the decision-making authority for health care policies at the state level, where the legislature would be free to tailor and pilot innovative programs that could simultaneously lower costs, while also improving health care.
Although for now it is gestating in the “pipe dream” stage due to the need for congressional approval, this legislation could become a major nationwide contender to properly overhaul the debacle we call healthcare in America.
Apparently this push for healthcare compacts is catching on, because “the legislation has been introduced in over a dozen other states.”
For more, read Eric O’Keefe’s excellent op-ed about why this radical new idea is the best way to overhaul the system.
As for Jay Nixon and Missouri’s participation, we shall see tomorrow.
- B.H.
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