Isaiah J. Poole at Campaign for America’s future tells us that Sen. Jim Bunning’s refusal to allow even a temporary extension of unemployment insurance and COBRA funding that expires tomorrow “is going to end up costing cash-strapped states millions of dollars as well as potentially causing millions of workers to lose their unemployment benefits.” Continuing:
The human cost is obvious: People who have been searching for work unsuccessfully for six months or more are suddenly going to lose their only means of income. And that’s going to be a lot of people in a state like Bunning’s Kentucky, where the unemployment rate is 10.7 percent, compared to 9.7 percent nationally. Nationally, 6.3 million people have been out of work for more than 27 weeks, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But there are significant costs to cash-strapped states, which are going to have to start sending out notices Monday to many of the people who will lose eligibility under these programs. The National Association of State Workforce Agencies doesn’t have a solid estimate on those administrative costs, but “it’s certainly millions,” said spokesman Ben Fendler, and “the magnitude of the problem will increase significantly if the programs are not reenacted immediately,” because new people will lose their eligibility for extended benefits at the rate of 150,000 a week.
On the health care front, here is a moment of compassionate conservatism (see quote below) that I missed (thanks to Michael Stickings, who wrote about it at The Reaction today):
Emergency rooms should be able to turn patients away to cut costs, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) said last night
Appearing on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Sustren” last night, Pawlenty said the federal law that mandates ER treatment should be repealed.
“Well, for one thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in the door, even if they have a minor condition,” Pawlenty said. “They should be — if you have a minor condition, instead of being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic.”
Supporters of the federal law would content that many people go to ERs precisely because they do not have the insurance to pay for a primary care physician.
Van Susteren was also skeptical about Pawlenty’s proposal, pointing out that it’s difficult to tell what’s a minor condition without treating it.
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