Missouri’s Newspapers Agree: Coverage of the Uninsured is a Priority: Pass Insure Missouri

“Playing politics when people’s health is at stake is reprehensible. Yet, it’s happening in the Missouri Legislature, where House Speaker Rod Jetton is killing any chances that Insure Missouri will live.” — The Joplin Globe, 5/2/08

“… Mr. Schaaf continues to argue that the certificate-of-need process needs to be changed, and then says Insure Missouri won’t be taken up ‘unless we can agree’ on the changes he favors.

Political jockeying is nothing new, but it is particularly unseemly when propositions that otherwise are unlikely to pass are attached to measures that most certainly need to be passed.

The full House should be allowed to decide the fate of Insure Missouri. If Mr. Jetton is correct, a majority of the 163 members will vote to defeat it. If not, then thousands of low-income Missourians will have access to badly needed health insurance.” — St. Joseph News-Press, 4/26/08

“A plan that would restore some health insurance to as many as 200,000 Missourians resurfaced this week. … While this is the first serious proposal this session to make it this far — there is only about one month left in the session — legislators in Jefferson City are playing politics with the issue. Some complain that it does not restore benefits to those people legislated off Medicare rolls two years ago by Blunt and the Republican legislature. That much is sad, but true.

What is even more distressing is that there are nearly three-quarters of a million Missourians who lack health insurance. That number is growing at three times the national average, a statistic that should simply just be unacceptable.

It is time — as Gov. Blunt noted this week — for the members of the state House to decide if they do, in fact, represent the voters of Missouri. If they think they do, the House needs to get to work and pass a plan.” — Lake Sun-Leader, 4/23/08

“The House version of Insure Missouri is inadequate and unworkable. It should be voted down in favor of an alternate bill now in the Senate. Missouri already has seen what happens when ideology is substituted for sound policy. We don't need an instant replay.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 4/18/08

“Gov. Matt Blunt’s proposed Insure Missouri plan is a promising beginning to cover more low-income adults. But legislative opposition — and the governor’s own retreat in the face of that opposition — leaves the plan languishing. It deserves new life.” — The Kansas City Star, 4/2/08

“The difference between a politician and a statesman is that the former thinks about the next election while the latter is focused on the next generation. Today many Democrats and Republicans are holding out because they want to ‘own’ the Medicaid issue, blaming their counterparts for putting so many Missourians in harm's way.

But while Nero fiddled, Rome burned, and while politicians posture, people suffer. How health care is handled may be a partisan issue for those at the Capitol, but for those who are ill, it's a black and blue world, not a red or blue state that matters.” — St. Louis Business Journal, 2/15/08