Remember this one?
Officials from California, Kentucky and other states say they are being asked to reimburse Medicare for more than they are saving…
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Wednesday that his state would join several others in a lawsuit to ask the Supreme Court to halt the payment requirement. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he supports the expected suit.
Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo said Thursday that the case will be filed by March 1.
Kathy Walt, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said the state is considering a number of options, including a lawsuit.
Now, the state of Texas has filed a motion with the US Supreme Court asking to file a complaint against, Micheal Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which became effective in January, mandates that states pay a portion of drug costs to people eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.
If a state fails to make these payments to the federal government, according to the complaint, the Medicare law allows the Health and Human Services Department to offset that amount, plus interest, against Medicaid allocations to the state.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed the motion, claiming that Texas will lose approximately $100 million over the next four years due to the Bush administration’s implementation of the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug plan.
Kentucky, Maine, Missouri and New Jersey. Alaska, Connecticut, Kansas, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Vermont filed friend-of-the-court briefs.
Gary Karr, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services disagrees that states will lose money through the Medicare prescription drug plan.
“States are going to save money with the Medicare drug program because they will not be paying all the Medicaid drug coverage.”
But what about all of the emergency measures that the states have had to take to ensure that people who were caught in a “computer glitch” received their rx’s?
Abbot also stated
“Texas and other states have been forced to relinquish control over how we plan and budget taxpayer dollars to support Medicare’s federal drug benefit program for seniors…The federal government has placed what amounts to a direct tax upon Texas and other states in violation of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits Washington from interfering with essential functions of state government.”
Think gwb will try to hide in Crawford to “clear brush” anytime soon?