South Dakotans Decide Healthcare Officially Receives Place on November Ballot
South Dakotans Decide Healthcare, a broad coalition of patient advocates, nurses, healthcare providers, farmers, faith leaders, educators, and more, announced today that the Secretary of State has officially validated the signatures and that their Medicaid expansion constitutional amendment will have a place on the ballot in November.
Zach Marcus, campaign manager for South Dakotans Decide Healthcare, said, “We are grateful for the support of the tens of thousands of South Dakotans who signed our petition to enable us to be on the ballot. Medicaid expansion will be an economic driver for South Dakota. It will boost our economy, save rural hospitals, create jobs, help ensure hard working South Dakotans don’t drown in medical debt, and bring our hard earned tax dollars home. This is a healthcare issue, but it’s also a commonsense dollars and cents issue.”
Medicaid Expansion will appear on the ballot as Amendment D.
South Dakotans Decide Healthcare has been endorsed by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, AARP South Dakota, South Dakota State Medical Association, South Dakota Nurses Association, South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations, South Dakota Education Association, South Dakota Farmers Union, Community HealthCare of the Dakotas, Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board, Avera Health, Monument Health, Sanford Health, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, South Dakota Faith in Public Life, and more. It is one of the broadest coalitions to ever launch a ballot measure campaign in the state’s history.
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Amendment D for Debt or Dumb or both
Where is the money coming from to pay for this? Taxpayers. So money will be taken from the pockets of SD taxpayers and put back in the pockets of other South Dakotans, and this is supposed to boost our economy? Money migjt be promised frm the feds, but those monies usually come with a timeline and then we are on our own. Based on who 0is sponsoring this, it seems they are less interested in improving health care and more interested in improving their bottom line.
Majority of monies will come from the Feds Kind of like the the support that farmers/ ranchers etc receive Only difference is that the people that need the support will receive it in this case
Who isn’t getting Medicaid right now Anon that would be under this proposal?
VB, then why is it needed?
It’s not needed.
How many nursing homes have closed in SD in the past 5 years? Don’t you think those additional dollars couldn’t have saved those facilities like it did in other states? Would you rather we kick the elderly poor to shanty towns like we did in the old days?
This has nothing to do with nursing homes. That falls under the current medicaid.
Better than that Amendment C garbage.
Right now indigent healy care is covered by hospitals and counties. So we get higher hospital bills or higher taxes to cover it.
Jeff it is not a matter of higher taxes or higher hospital bills, it’s a matter of both.
We will get both. Higher taxes to cover the costs incurred by the government, AND higher hospital bills as a result of all the cost-shifting. Medicaid reimbursement is a joke, it’s so bad. The big unpaid balances will be added to the charges sent to the paying patients..If you have a job and private insurance you will pay for Medicaid twice:, in higher taxes and higher copays..
Dirty little secret: many of the the able bodied working from 18-55 that would be covered under expansion already have private health insurance. They would be encouraged to move from that to a government funded health insurance plan.
It makes absolutely no sense for the taxpayers be forced to pay for the health insurance of able-bodied adults with no dependents.
Great news. I find it funny that no one wants to pay for anything but when it comes to Thune’s massive military spending posts there’s not a peep. We care more about sticking our noses in over counties business than our own citizens’ health apparently.
Convince people that the entire world is out to get you and they will pay you whatever you want. Fiscal responsibility is for other people.
A majority of these comments are just plain inaccurate. One major reason that healthcare costs are going up is the uncompensated care that hospitals, especially rural hospitals, have to absorb on a yearly basis because people don’t have any type of insurance. Many of these same people end up in the emergency room because there is little to no preventative care. There are an estimated 55k South Dakotans, many of whom are working, that fall into this gap in coverage. They make too much to be eligible for Medicaid now and not enough to get a plan off the exchange. If you want your health care cost to go down, get 55k fellow citizens covered, and save rural hospitals than we need to expand Medicaid plain and simple.
Thank you! Even setting aside the effects on the cost of healthcare in rural areas, many states realized a net positive on their Medicaid budget after Expansion. The cost of Expansion coverage is paid at 90% by the federal government, while other Medicaid services is paid at about 58% currently in SD.
Expansion covers things that are not eligible under “regular” Medicaid, like some mental health and behavioral health services. If the state has any costs related to these services, expansion would result in a direct savings to the state. Medicaid expansion also allows some people in the custody of DOC to be eligible for Medicaid that aren’t currently eligible. The State covers 100% of the cost of healthcare for inmates. If more inmates qualified for Medicaid, the State would see a direct cost savings on costs of healthcare for those inmates.
And that’s not even considering the huge coverage gains and improved health of those who would be newly eligible.
10% is more than zero.
306 is more than 232.
I’m not sure if you’re being facetious, so I’ll clarify. Currently, the state pays 100% of the cost of healthcare for inmates. If some of these inmates can qualify for Medicaid under Expansion, the state would only be responsible for 10% of those costs because the federal government would cover 90%.
Make the inmates work it off. Problem solved.
According to CMS, it is Medicaid patients using hospital emergency rooms, not the uninsured or the privately insured.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5564052/
and it is not the uninsured leaving huge unpaid bills in their wake, it’s the people on government insurance like Medicare, Medicaid, the IHS and now, the VA’s care in the community program.
The reimbursements are pathetic. I am actually embarrassed when I receive EOBs showing how little Medicare pays; seldom more than 30% of the charges.
Prior to passage of the affordable care act, we were told expanding medicaid would reduce the use of hospital emergency departments. It had the opposite effect. It got worse. .
Oh no, what if the majority of the state votes for this and it passes? What will the inner party do? Too bad they can’t just ignore it, or overturn it in the legislature, or find some technicality to invalidate it within the local corrupt courts. What will we do???
Quit whining people, this is dead on arrival, regardless of the outcome of the vote. You live in South Dakota.
Medicaid expansion is classic “I’m from the government and I am here to help you”. We all know how that turns out in the end.
https://intjem.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12245-017-0157-4
here: 19% of Medicaid recipients, 3.9% of privately insured patients, and 8.1% of the uninsured had two or more hospital ED visits in a year.
Anybody who thinks increasing the population of people on Medicaid is going to clear out the hospital emergency departments is nuts. It will make it worse.