Senator Roy Blunt discusses health coverage and immigration

This final article covers United States Senator Roy Blunt’s answers to questions on healthcare and immigration. Two previous articles covered polling, divisiveness, rural broadband and other topics. Senator Blunt made a stop at the Nevada Daily Mail on Aug. 23 where he met the staff and took a few minutes to answer questions provided by locals.

Sarah Haney provided a question on health coverage and Medicaid expansion. “What is your stance on Medicaid expansion in Missouri and what measures, at the federal level, could be taken to help those who have fallen into the health coverage gap?”

The Senator answered that he doesn’t, as a rule, give much advice to legislators on the state level as there are plenty of problems at the federal level. “On the Medicaid front, that’s really up to the state.”

“There was a huge incentive built in (to the Affordable Care Act, ACA) to try to convince the states that somehow, the federal government would pay all the bill initially and most of the bill forever if they would just expand Medicaid. And I think Missouri legislature has lots of reasons to be skeptical with what would actually be the long-term result of expanding, but it’s up to them to decide.”

As part of the ACA (Obamacare) states were to expand Medicaid coverage in order to cover more low-income citizens. Missouri is one of 14 states that opted not to expand coverage. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported in April that “219,000 uninsured nonelderly adults in Missouri would become eligible if Missouri extended Medicaid.” The report went on to say that if all 14 declining states expanded the program, nearly 4.5 million people would be eligible for coverage.

Senator Blunt believes that the biggest gap in healthcare coverage is mental health coverage. “Missouri is part of an eight state pilot where we have a number a facilities that have the mental health providers they need and are available 24/7 to deal with mental health – just like any other health care issue – I think that is the biggest gap in the country.”

After two to four years of “collecting information about peoples’ overall health care,” the Senator said the hope is for a “body of evidence that will show what happens to their other health care costs when you deal with their mental health care issue like it was any other health care issue. If you’ve got a mental health care issue, you should be able to go to the doctor and have that dealt with as long as it takes just like if you have a cancer problem – you should be able to go to the doctor and deal with that as long as it takes. I think that’s the biggest gap in our health care system right now.”

Dr. George Knox provided a question on immigration: “Why can’t we solve the problem on immigration? We have laws on the books – why aren’t we using them?”

Senator Blunt agreed, “I think we should enforce the laws that are on the books, and frankly, the agreement that the president and the new president of Mexico have made as to how we would deal with people waiting to have their case determined, I think is a significant step forward in the right direction.”

He also said that, “with the decision to secure the Guatemala/Mexican border, which is a much smaller border than the US/Mexican border and to – most of our immigration now is coming from – our illegal immigration – we still have a million legal immigrants coming to the US every year – but the million or some that come illegally are generally coming from three central American countries Guatemala and south of it, and so securing that border is important.”

Blunt continued: “I think the president is also right in wanting to shift our immigration status from a lottery – where you just draw names for people who legally immigrate – to more of a skills-based basis where you are actually trying to let people come to the country that either because they have exceptional skills or there is a need for low-skilled workers.”