Cincinnati’s recurring budget nightmare
In December, every other year, the City of Cincinnati’s biennial budget process arrives, a messy political jumble sale of wringing hands, tough rhetoric, competing ideologies and pet programs. Every time it comes around we see at least one new nightmare “loser idea.” In 2004 it was rotating fire station shutdowns. In 2006, Council hammered out a budget compromise involving human services funding in an overnight session– only to disagree, months later, over whether certain Council members were negotiating in good faith, or dreaming, or sleepwalking. In 2008 the issue getting all the press is the so-called “garbage tax.” But the “garbage tax” is a red herring. It conceals the cruelest “loser idea” we have seen so far.
Eliminating healthcare for the poor
This time, the City Manager has eliminated funding for primary health care for our most vulnerable citizens –children and families without health insurance—who receive basic medical care through neighborhood nonprofit health clinics such as the West End Health Center. The 2004 city budget funded this care at close to a million dollars. In 2006 it was cut to $450,000. And now the amount is zero.
Zero dollars for neighborhood health care centers at the worst of all possible economic times. When more and more people are losing health insurance coverage, arriving sicker than ever when they enter the health clinic door.
City-owned clinics cannot meet the demand for the care these neighborhood clinics provide. The Babies Milk Fund closed several pediatric clinics in November because Medicaid reimbursements could not cover operating costs.. Federal programs do not cover the costs neighborhood clinics incur when they serve uninsured persons. Local subsidies, foundation grants and donations keep them afloat –covering, for example, over $10.00 in non-reimbursed cost every time a clinic fills a prescription for an uninsured person – on top of the cost of the medicine itself.
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