STATEMENT: RI & Department of Health Reality Check; Center Renews Call for Inspector General

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 30, 2016

State Lawmakers Need to Face the Realities of a Trump Administration

Providence, RI– As it warned four years ago, when it advised against Medicaid expansion and the Unified Health Infrastructure Project (UHIP), the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity again warns against the ‘business as usual approach’ on display this past week by state officials. The Center suggests that the Rhode Island Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the state administration need a reality check with regard to the now epic UHIP computer systems disaster and the recent announcement of more funds planned to be sunk into expansion of the state’s Medicaid infrastructure.

“Newsflash: in seven weeks, Barack Obama will no longer be President. There is a shifting healthcare landscape and state officials need to recognize that unlimited federal support to continue these costly boondoggles is going to end,” suggested Mike Stenhouse, CEO for the Center. “At a time when the federal government will be making dramatic new course changes towards making private health insurance more accessible to more American families, our state, stubbornly, is doubling down on its plans to keep plowing ahead with the failed government-centric approach.”

The Center believes it is irresponsible to plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to expand our state’s Medicaid capacity at a time when the federal government and many other states will be moving in the opposite direction: towards reducing enrollment in the government’s public health insurance offering and, instead, towards increasing private health insurance enrollment through an aggressive offering of premium subsidies and/or tax credits. An even more poignant question is whether or not the new presidential administration and Congress will even re-authorize these funds?

The Center expresses further concern that the hundreds of millions of dollars of planned federal and state spending will do little to help working families and small businesses, who will be expected to pay for this spending, most of which go to enriching insider institutions that are part of the Medicaid system. “For every dollar we spend on this wayward path, that’s one less dollar we can proactively spend on education reform or tax cuts,” suggested Stenhouse.

As it has also maintained for years, the Center continues to warn that the real costs of UHIP have not yet fully materialized. The one-stop-shopping aspect of UHIP will purposely lead to increased enrollment in various government services – resulting in new costs that our state cannot afford and – because of the changing landscape – that the federal government may cut funding.

Based on these examples of government incompetence and the continued hemorrhaging of taxpayer money, the Center renews its call for government checks-and-balances via legislation that would create an Office of the Inspector General. The Center believes it is vital than an independent, non-partisan entity should keep watch over state spending in order to prevent the squandering of taxpayer money as has been seen with the UHIP and DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) computer systems. Similarly, major spending projects in other state agencies, such as the multi-billion dollar RhodeWorks program to repair the state’s crumbling bridges and roads, must also be subject to close fiscal oversight of this kind.