The Vanishing Cuts
October 24, 2011 - by
If Bev Perdue had a few more Cabinet Secretaries like Lanier Cansler she’d never have to cut spending a penny – no matter what Republican legislators said.
Last summer the Republicans told Cansler to cut the state’s $12.9 billion Medicaid budget by $350 million. The other day a team of legislators came back to Raleigh to see how Cansler was doing.
He wasn’t.
The problem, Cansler told legislators, isn’t that he doesn’t want to cut spending. It’s just that he can’t get Washington to go along. Which puzzled the Republicans who naturally asked, Well, Governor Perdue’s a Democrat and President Obama’s a Democrat – what’s the problem?
The problem doesn’t seem to entirely be Washington’s intransigence. Instead, Secretary Cansler may have legislators looking for cuts in the wrong places. Down in Mississippi and up in Ohio Republican Governors are saving money by moving Medicaid patients out of institutions – like Nursing Homes and Rest Homes – into in-home care which is less expensive. Cansler’s department, on the other hand, likes to move patients in the opposite direction. Into institutions.
Putting mental patients in institutions (instead of caring for them in their own homes) has landed Cansler’s department in hot water with Obama’s Justice Department. The bottom line: Moving mental patients out of institutions is a way to save money Washington favors.
And, then, there’s the CSC contract, the biggest contract in State government. In 2008, to get the contract CSC Corporation promised the state its high-tech computers would process Medicaid claims so effectively it would save millions. Instead, three years later, there is no new state of the art computer system. CSC is two years behind schedule and $200 million over budget and it says there will be no new system for at least two more years.
How much of the $350 million could legislators save by cancelling CSC’s contract?
One legislator actually asked Cansler’s aides, Well, instead of spending all this money to make all these rich companies richer why not just hire some folks and do it all on paper? Of course that got him ridiculed by lobbyists and by reporters but his point wasn’t really to argue the virtue of paper over mega-bytes. It was that paper shuffling seems to be one thing Secretary Cansler’s department does well.
Of course, there’s another perfectly understandable explanation for why Lanier Cansler won’t cut that $600 million, two year behind schedule computer contract or cut how much the state is spending on Nursing Homes. Before he was Secretary, Cansler lobbied for CSC Corporation and for the Nursing Homes industry.
The Vanishing Cuts
October 24, 2011/
If Bev Perdue had a few more Cabinet Secretaries like Lanier Cansler she’d never have to cut spending a penny – no matter what Republican legislators said.
Last summer the Republicans told Cansler to cut the state’s $12.9 billion Medicaid budget by $350 million. The other day a team of legislators came back to Raleigh to see how Cansler was doing.
He wasn’t.
The problem, Cansler told legislators, isn’t that he doesn’t want to cut spending. It’s just that he can’t get Washington to go along. Which puzzled the Republicans who naturally asked, Well, Governor Perdue’s a Democrat and President Obama’s a Democrat – what’s the problem?
The problem doesn’t seem to entirely be Washington’s intransigence. Instead, Secretary Cansler may have legislators looking for cuts in the wrong places. Down in Mississippi and up in Ohio Republican Governors are saving money by moving Medicaid patients out of institutions – like Nursing Homes and Rest Homes – into in-home care which is less expensive. Cansler’s department, on the other hand, likes to move patients in the opposite direction. Into institutions.
Putting mental patients in institutions (instead of caring for them in their own homes) has landed Cansler’s department in hot water with Obama’s Justice Department. The bottom line: Moving mental patients out of institutions is a way to save money Washington favors.
And, then, there’s the CSC contract, the biggest contract in State government. In 2008, to get the contract CSC Corporation promised the state its high-tech computers would process Medicaid claims so effectively it would save millions. Instead, three years later, there is no new state of the art computer system. CSC is two years behind schedule and $200 million over budget and it says there will be no new system for at least two more years.
How much of the $350 million could legislators save by cancelling CSC’s contract?
One legislator actually asked Cansler’s aides, Well, instead of spending all this money to make all these rich companies richer why not just hire some folks and do it all on paper? Of course that got him ridiculed by lobbyists and by reporters but his point wasn’t really to argue the virtue of paper over mega-bytes. It was that paper shuffling seems to be one thing Secretary Cansler’s department does well.
Of course, there’s another perfectly understandable explanation for why Lanier Cansler won’t cut that $600 million, two year behind schedule computer contract or cut how much the state is spending on Nursing Homes. Before he was Secretary, Cansler lobbied for CSC Corporation and for the Nursing Homes industry.