The Star Tribune reports on the rippling consequences of last summer’s budget cuts to health care. A group of people with disabilities and their families are suing the state to block a wage cut to family members who work as personal care attendants. In another development, cuts to Medical Assistance for noncitizens may force some severely disabled individuals out of nursing homes. The article’s headline characterizes these events as “unforeseen”, but that’s letting the Legislature off the hook much too easily. Anyone with a good grasp of these programs could have predicted the fallout of those cuts. Unfortunately, many legislators are either too new or too disinterested to possess that working knowledge. And let’s not forget that the final budget was passed in a flurry to end a three-week state government shutdown, leaving little time for debate. The resulting bad policy mires the state in legal action that could diminish any planned savings those policies were designed to achieve.
The notion of citizen legislators who govern for a few months and then return to their other jobs is a fine and noble one, but perhaps the job of setting policy for a 21st-century state is becoming too complicated to be left to part-timers.
