Turns out it’s not presidential salaries or huge budgets for athletic departments or campus improvement projects that are driving up the cost of college. It’s poor and sick people who use Medicaid for healthcare.
That’s the analysis of Senator Mitch McConnell. He spoke in Louisville today at a co-working space that is part of Nucleus – an incubator for healthcare companies. The complex – including a big new building going up across the street – is part of the University of Louisville’s health sciences campus.
A recent college graduate in the front row asked what McConnell thought was going to happen with student loan rates. McConnell admitted that this was a rare instance when the President and the Republicans were on one side of the issue and Democrats were on the other. McConnell assured the questioner that the rate would not be 6.8%, without giving any other details. He used the question to blame rising college tuition on the growing cost of Medicaid.
Using Informed Awareness to Transform Care Coordination and Improve the Clinical and Patient Experience
This eBook, in collaboration with Care Logistics, details how hospitals and health systems can facilitate more effective decision-making by operationalizing elevated awareness.
“Medicaid and education funding are the two biggest parts of every state budget,” he said. “As the Medicaid bill gets bigger, funding for education is cut and colleges have to raise tuition.”
Kentucky will be expanding Medicaid and is building its own insurance exchange. Kentucky’s governor is a Democrat.
The senator did not offer an alternative source for health insurance for people on Medicaid, but he did have ideas about how to keep other benefits programs solvent. McConnell’s solution for saving Social Security and Medicare is to adjust benefits to fit the demographics of the country.
“My members are talking opening about raising the age limit for Social Security and that is thanks to Marco Rubio,” he said. “Saving the program also requires means testing – many of you in this room should not be getting these benefits at all.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
McConnell said that he has been prepared “forever” to work with President Obama to make these changes, but the president won’t take up the challenge.
McConnell credited three new business forces with giving the country an advantage over the rest of the world: horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracking, and advancements in healthcare technology.
“If we can get the government straightened out, there’s no reason America can’t still be number one at the end of this century,” he said. “It’s amazing we can compete at all but we can because we are such an entrepreneurial country.”
