State officials claim that spiraling health-care costs coupled with plunging tax revenues have forced their hand in chopping benefits for working people and others with low incomes who have no other way to get medical care.

Medicaid is a federal government program that provides medical coverage for more than 40 million people on low incomes. It pays for 35 percent of all births in the United States and covers 6 million elderly and disabled persons, who also receive Medicare benefits.

According to a survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 49 state governments are slashing services to Medicaid beneficiaries, reducing payments to doctors and hospitals, and restricting eligibility to the program.

Programs that are affected include dental care for adults, physical therapy, and subsidies on eyeglasses and hearing aids. Coverage for nursing homes and other providers of health care is being slashed or frozen.

In California, Governor Gray Davis has proposed budget changes that would remove almost 500,000 people from the Medicaid program. Officials threaten that more cutbacks are to come.  
 
Only way to get treated
Washington State has removed half the 120,000 people who are enrolled in that state’s health program for childless adults on low incomes, and eliminated special payments to hospitals for charity care for the uninsured. Such services are often the only way that many working people receive medical treatment, including for serious and even life-threatening conditions--generally by heading for emergency rooms.

A spokesperson for the Nebraska Health and Human Services System said that a law passed last year establishing a new method for assessing income would knock 28,000 people off the Medicaid rolls. The government has also reduced coverage--from two years to one--for welfare recipients who have found jobs.

The cuts represent new blows to the availability of affordable health care for working people in the United States. A National Academy of Science survey reports that health-care costs are rising at an annual rate of more than 12 percent, "while at the same time individuals are paying more out of pocket and receiving fewer benefits." The survey also noted "disturbing racial and ethnic disparities in access to and use of services."

By the latest figures some 41.2 million people--14.5 percent of the population--are in that position.

Across the country bosses have been demanding that workers--both current and retired--shoulder a larger share of rising insurance premiums. For example, in 2000 less than 11 percent of private companies provided health benefits to retirees over 65. Three years earlier the figure had been almost double that.

Employer demands for increased health-care "co-payments" have been a central issue in several union struggles over the past year, including the 44-day strike by workers at Hershey Foods in Pennsylvania.

On January 14 some 17,000 workers at General Electric launched a two-day nationwide walkout to protest the bosses’ demands for higher co-payments for prescription drugs and doctor visits.  
 
 
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