HUNTINGTON -- When is a record $3.1 trillion federal budget not enough?
When it slashes important programs essential to West Virginians, says Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).
Rockefeller buzzed into the heart of Huntington Sunday afternoon to host a round-table discussion at Cabell Huntington Hospital to talk about President Bush's proposed cuts to Medicare -- which, nationwide, total $182.7 billion over the next five years.
In a room with about a dozen physicians, health care professionals and West Virginia legislators, Rockefeller listened and then discussed how the extensive cuts would directly affect payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers. It could result in the loss of health care for thousands of West Virginians.
"I think I should listen before I talk," Rockefeller said.
Those gathered -- top officials and leaders from St. Mary's Medical Center, Cabell Huntington Hospital and Marshall University's School of Medicine -- provided a chorus of unity in saying that the proposed deep cuts to health care would be devastating to one of America's most elderly and poorest states.
Bush's budget proposes slashing $17.4 billion over five years from Medicaid; and at the same time, $182.7 billion from Medicare.
In West Virginia, about 600,000 people receive some sort of Medicare assistance while 392,000 receive Medicaid, officials said at the meeting.
The physicians gathered said these cuts would directly impact West Virginia's nursing homes, hospitals, home health agencies and health care for the disabled.
Labeled by one person as "Mission Impossible" and "a perfect storm" of crippling cuts, the budget includes Bush's recommendation to cut 86 percent for rural health care programs.
Both Robert Walker, clinical director for the Robert C. Byrd Center for Rural Health, and Ron Stollings (D-Boone), a West Virginia state senator as well as a family practice physician, fight that daily uphill battle of providing health care in areas under served by physicians and plagued with a myriad of chronic health problems.
At his practice in Madison in Boone County, Stollings said he has 60 percent of his patients on Medicare with the rest on PEIA or Medicaid.
"We're already staring down the barrel of 10 percent paycuts," Stollings said, "and this is not the first time this has happened. ... I want to thank you for fighting for us from the bottom of my heart and from the hearts of my patients."
Stollings said health care needs an increase in funding as the mass influx of baby boomers and large numbers of people with chronic diseases will overwhelm the current system.
Don Perdue (D-Wayne), an assistant majority whip in the West Virginia House of Delegates, and State Sen. Evan Jenkins (D-Cabell) both said that Bush's budget proposal -- though it will never pass with a Democratic majority in the House and Senate -- include devastating cuts to West Virginia's most vulnerable citizens.
"Morality has walked," Perdue said. "This is about as amoral of a budget as anything I have ever seen."
Jenkins said the president's priorities are the war and making tax cuts permanent, and that the budget reflects those priorities at the expense of health care, education and infrastructure.
"Why propose a budget that is this Draconian other than to make a point to his base?" Jenkins said. "He wants to go out and make that point... But we will feel the negative impact in West Virginia."
Rockefeller said because of the record deficit amassed by the Bush administration, there will be tough times ahead for many domestic programs, regardless of whether a Republican or Democrat is elected.
He said the increased deficit and the weight of debt continue to shrink options for legislators.
"In the past, we've always been able to make it up, and there have always been the sources to get funding," Rockefeller said, explaining about how an increase in cigarette tax was used to pay for a children's health care increase. "We compromised, and that is the art of legislation, you compromise. ... If it's Hillary, Obama or McCain, there's going to be no freedom because of the tax cuts."
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