Pataki's medicaid reform

He wants to turn Family Care Plus into a high-deductible catastrophic care program. It completely defeats the purpose. They might as well abandon the program altogether.

"In a visit to Rochester on Wednesday, Pataki said New York must make these Medicaid moves if the state is to remain financially viable. Controlling the growth of Medicaid, he said, would allow the program to grow at a slower rate but still retain a comprehensive health care system. Other states have made similar moves. Tennessee, for example, has proposed cutting eligibility and benefits to TenCare, which has been promoted as one of the country's most innovative health coverage plans for low-income workers. But the growing cost has been taking up too much of the state's budget. New York's Family Health Plus was supposed to be a safety net for low-income workers. To join, families with children must have incomes that don't exceed 150 percent of federal poverty levels, or 133 percent for families without children. 'But these proposed changes take the guts out of the program,' said Robert Thompson, president and chief executive of the Monroe Plan for Medical Care, which connects uninsured people with government programs. 'You're taking the plan down to catastrophic insurance with high co-payments, which is not what the program was designed to do. Now all these co-payments will compete with food and housing costs. We're back to where we started.' "