Report on Privatized Medicaid in Iowa several years ago. (2 minutes)

Well it is Mother’s Day weekend.  The MAGA party will make a big deal about mothers and motherhood while doing all they can to make it damned tough to live in Iowa if you were someone’s child who happened to be born poor or somehow physically defective. 

Over my decades in Iowa, for a long time we could count on some balance between the parties to keep Iowa from straying too far from the middle in policy matters. Thanks to the fact that Iowans as citizens were actually more focused on policies rather than parties, most politicians were also. Thus Iowa was able to concoct state governments that actually conceived some pretty solid policies from election policies to alcohol policies to things like community colleges.

Living in Iowa was different from a lot of other states because our laws and policies usually made sense.  Gawd knows that could never last. I wonder all the time what caused Iowa’s big jump to the right wing state we have become. There is little to no compromising in Iowa any more with MAGAs in power. What they say goes whether it makes sense or not.

We have talked among friends as to what caused the big rightward move, but like many we come up empty on what was behind the move. The takeover of statewide radio by right wing corporations seems to be a favorite choice (remember Clear Channel that took over Iowa’s biggest radio stations and broadcast the likes of Hannity and Limbaugh relentlessly?).

Whatever caused the huge right turn, the MAGAs of the day decided they would use their advantage to redirect state monies from aiding Iowans in need to corporate money bins. I don’t know if the medicaid theft was the first such policy – maybe you could say the union busting was the first – but the medicaid theft was boldest and most in-your-face such policy.

Thanks to the Iowa state democrats we have a timeline of how the MAGA party of the day with Branstad just running over people put this really bad policy in place. You can find it here. This will probably dredge up some bad memories, but will also remind us how MAGAs implement policy with a sledge hammer approach. I love the way the list starts:

January 2015 | Branstad tells Legislature he has decided to unilaterally privatize Medicaid. 

Since this bad policy has been implemented patients have lost huge amounts of care, Managed Care Organizations (gawd I hate that term that sanitizes these rip-off corporations) have feasted at the state coffers turning what at one time cost the state @ 2% to a glutton that eats 20% of the budget and wants more while drastically cutting services.

This horrendous policy has been normalized through a very complacent state wide press that after a short period just treated the situation as nothing out of the ordinary. After that success MAGAs have continued to make Iowa over into the image and likeness of Mississippi cutting school budgets to the bone, enacting laws that put children to work and of course the voucher program for privatized school with an eye toward ending a once excellent public school system in Iowa.

Do not expect any of these policies that steal from the poor and give to the rich to ever go away. Such bad policies linger forever as a complacent press ignores their effects on the state and the electorate is lulled into a stupor bay a press that ignores these policies.

In our lifetimes we have seen a state that was once at the apex of education with solid values devolve into a state that now competes in the lowest quartile of education while citizens struggle to make ends meet working at low lying jobs. That is what happens when a party bent on oligarchy and authoritarianism completely takes over the poor structure. Good luck getting rid of them.