Vox, Sarah Kliff:
The Trump administration has informed government-funded Obamacare outreach groups of deep impending budget cuts next year, with some nonprofits having budgets slashed by as much as 98 percent.
“We’re letting 11 navigators go today, which leaves us with five navigators for the entire state,” says Brian Burton, director of the Southwest Louisiana Area Health Education Center. His funding was cut from a $1.07 million grant this year to $297,000 next year.
The Health and Human Services Department announced August 31 that it would cut funding for the health law’s in-person assistance program by 41 percent. Late Wednesday night, the administration sent each group its individual budget. It shows widespread variation in how big those funding cuts will be.
Louisiana and Indiana, for example, will have the outreach funding coming into their states cut by 80 percent. Maine, however, will have its budget held constant — while Kansas will only see a 9 percent funding cut.
Outreach groups are responding to the cuts by laying off staff and scaling back the geographic areas where they provide assistance.
Any time there's a significant decrease in Spending (government or otherwise), there's a downward push on the economy, and that has always cost us more than we've "saved".
As the funding is cut, the negative impact in those geographic areas left under- or un-served will be greater than it will be in the more densely populated and/or richer areas. So I guess we can expect another hard round of "it may be tough for you Real Americans right now, but it's OK because you're helping us fuck over those big-city moocher-minorities, and we all know that's what you think is the most important thing".
Torpedoing the ACA is bad enough, but providing nothing to replace the economic benefits
of the ACA is a plain ol' straight up shitty thing to do.
So I have to ask the 'why' question. It's not like they don't understand how an economy works.
I may be feeling paranoid, but that don't mean nobody's out to get me.
