Since I last wrote about Virginia’s foot-dragging on expanding Medicaid back at the beginning of January, a number of interesting developments have taken place. Fortunately, after what can only be described as a beating with evidence, public outrage, politicking, manipulation, and extreme waste of resources, it looks like Virginia is starting to consider accepting the expansion of Medicaid and joining the ranks of such progressive states as oh, Florida.

There is a back story to why this is happening now, and why Virginia’s uber-conservatives are allowing it at all. It involves the opportunity to profit. To understand why, let’s go through a quick summary of the events of the past couple months.

When the House of Delegates and Senate worked on their budget bills, the House agreed to accept Medicaid funding only if Virginia could have authority to “reform” Medicaid, and only after a likely special session meeting. The Senate bill was slightly less strict, saying Medicaid expansion would happen without approval from the General Assembly, but that “reforms” were still necessary.

Earlier this week, McDonnell really gave us a good scare by implying that no matter what kind of reforms Washington allows Virginia to make, it was unlikely Medicaid would be expanded. He wrote a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate budget committee on Wednesdays, including the following, “Please understand that I cannot and will not support consideration of an expansion of Medicaid in Virginia until major reforms are authorized and completed, and until we receive guarantees that the federal government’s promises to the states can be kept without increasing the immoral national debt.”  It’s worth noting that McDonnell vehemently opposed cuts to the national “defense” budget, yet the US spends, as this article very nicely elaborates, “nearly as much on military as the rest of the world combined.”

Virginia’s Democrats in the House, seeming to recognize how ridiculous this was all starting to get, started to talk about blocking the Transportation Bill if the Medicaid expansion didn’t happen*. So, yesterday, the Senate and House voted to, uh, if not exactly accept federal money and expand Medicaid, then to pave the way towards accepting it in July with the stipulation that there be major reforms to the way Medicaid is handled in Virginia. Completely and utterly confusing, I know. This article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported, “The budget actions give a green light to negotiations already under way between state and federal officials on flexibility in how Medicaid is administered in Virginia — from the benefits that would be provided to newly eligible participants and their share of the costs, to the eventual use of managed care for all Medicaid services to control costs.”

Aha! Virginia wants to have more flexibility to use managed care for Medicaid. Read this as : Virginia wants to contract out the administration of Medicaid to private companies, like in Florida. They want reassurance that the federal government will allow this. With Florida setting precedent earlier in the week to move forward with increased privatization of Medicaid, Virginia was able to breathe a little sigh of relief. We might get the government out of our Medicaid after all! Florida state representative Mark Pafford remarked, “Whenever you inject the profit motive into medical decision-making, there’s a tension between patients’ interests and stockholders’ interests…We haven’t seen any hard evidence that privatizing Medicaid will actually help people.” Well said. So why is the federal government allowing this?? Well, it’s giving lip service to critics like Pafford, saying that Florida has 3 years to prove that privatization provides effective coverage and keeps costs down. On Wednesday, when Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced Florida would be expanding Medicaid, he stated, “Quality healthcare services must be accessible and affordable for all, not just those in certain zip codes or tax brackets.” It’s interesting how quickly Republican governors take up the language of real health reform advocates when the opportunity presents itself to make a profit off Medicaid.

It is well-documented how privately administered Medicare Advantage programs increase costs to taxpayers and lower quality of health services delivered. These programs have wasted $283 billion dollars in taxpayer money from 1985-2012. It’s a complicated story, but just one of the ways this happened is because the programs select for the healthiest seniors, leaving the sickest, poorest, and most expensive seniors to the standard Medicare program. Private corporations that administer these programs go home with a profit; American taxpayers literally get sold out.

The always-eloquent health justice activist, pediatrician, and role-model Dr. Margaret Flowers put it best in 2011 when she wrote about privatization of publicly-funded healthcare. “Medicare and Medicaid must be left out of the discussion entirely until leadership has the courage to address the real reasons why our health care costs are rising, the toxic environment created by investor owned insurances and the profit-driven health care industry.”

*Transportation funding plans in Virginia are particularly near and dear to my heart as there was serious discussion about re-adding a toll to I-95 South effectively throwing poor, rural southern Virginia – where I am originally from – under the bus. Making the poorer areas of the state subsidize the wealthier parts is NEVER a good idea. Ultimately this didn’t make it into the transportation bill, fortunately, but it bears mention that it was McDonnell’s idea, and given his high-falutin’ talk about “morality,” it’s interesting how selectively morality can be applied.