Winfield, Markley Want Medicaid Cuts Restored

Connecticut hospitals’ plea for help has landed on two sets of ears from two sides of the aisle.

Those sets of ears belong to Democratic State Sen. Gary Winfield of New Haven (pictured above at right) and Tea Party Republican State Sen. Joe Markley (at left).

Despite their ideological differences, both senators — during their latest joint appearance on WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven” — agreed with the Connecticut Hospital Association that state lawmakers should undo Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s decision to slice $63.4 million in Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals across the state.

Because the federal government reimburses the state two dollars for every dollar of Medicaid spending, that means hospitals stand to lose $192 million altogether. They say that means drastic service cuts will occur as a result.

“I don’t understand it. I think Malloy has some kind of animus against the hospitals. He’s been back after them every time around,” Markley remarked.

“I’d be derelict as a state senator if I wasn’t listening to the people in my district” pushing the legislature to restore the money, said Winfield.

Winfield and Markley agreed that cuts can be found elsewhere — beginning with the state’s Board of Regents.

They also agreed that simply slashing hospital CEO salaries wouldn’t begin to make up the money.

They didn’t agree about everything, of course. They differed on whether a special session of the legislature should be called to reverse the cuts, and whether tax increases also need to be part of a fix.

The governor said he made the cuts as part of emergency budget rescissions in response to a drop in the stock market. He noted that some hospitals’ CEOs make seven-figure salaries, and that most hospitals have posted profits. The governor’s spokesman, Devon Puglia, quoted in this CT Mirror story, accused critics of the cuts of ​“standing with CEOs, asking taxpayers to subsidize multimillion-dollar salaries … the hospital industry made hundreds of millions of dollars in profit last year, with executive teams making money hand over fist.”

The hospital association called that argument a red herring, saying that even eliminating all executive salaries wouldn’t go far toward closing that $192 million gap. The association and its members said services will have to be cut as a result of Malloy’s decision.

Some Democratic leaders have stood by the governor. Republicans have called for a special session to undo the cuts. Markley endorsed that call on the WNHH program. Winfield said a ​“serious conversation” has to begin ​“now” within legislative committees about finding a mix of other cuts and tax increases to replace the Medicaid cuts. But he cautioned against convening a special session until lawmakers have a specific plan; otherwise a special session could spin out of control, take on other issues, cost money to run, and never get to a solution.

Markely countered that Republicans have already proposed an alternative budget with sufficient cuts. Winfield pointed out that that alternative budget contains large unspecific union concessions — which the legislature can’t mandate, and which ahve proved illusory in the past. Markley said Malloy himself has mentioned a need to revisit union contracts, but he also agreed with Winfield that the legislature can’t impose that saving.

However Markley said other glaring opportunities do exist to cut — beginning with $20 million a year spent on a failed Board of Regents for Higher Education, which has seen five leaders come and go in three years while failing to bring about promised improvements to the state higher education system. Markley argued the whole board could be whittled down to two employees with oversight shared by existing executive branch appointees.

“You can have a board that doesn’t become a bureaucracy, that can provide oversight,” Markley argued. ​“You can staff something with two people instead of over 100 people. You have over 100 people earning an average of over $100,000 a year…. The head of the Board of Reegents is being paid over $300,000 a year. That strikes me as a lot of money. And I would think that somebody would be willing to do a good job for less than that.”

“What we have is large. It’s cumbersome. It’s not necessarily doing what it should be doing. We can probably pare it down. My question is: how far?” Winfield responded. He suggested that perhaps $5 million, not $20 million, a year could be saved on the regents — which is a start.

Markley added that he’d do away with the governor’s ​“First Five” program of giving private companies millions of dollars in ​“corporate welfare” in response to threats to leave the state.

Click on the above sound file to listen to the full program, which also covered the pope’s visit to America (and the question: Was Jesus a socialist?) and the threatened cuts in federal funding for Planned Parenthood.