RIte Care cuts would yield 7 cents on the dollar

NEWPORT – A new report by a national nonprofit advocacy group shows each dollar cut from the RIte Care program would yield only 7 cents in net savings, a finding that Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva-Weed, D-Newport, said “only confirms that cutting RIte Care just doesn’t make good financial sense for Rhode Island.”
The analysis, produced by Community Catalyst, was released last week by RIte Care Works, a coalition that is fighting to prevent cuts to RIte Care. The group held a press conference with Paiva-Weed and other supporters at East Bay Community Action Program in Newport.
The report offered this breakdown of where each dollar would go:
• 52 cents would stay with the federal government rather than making it to Rhode Island in the form of federal matching funds.
• 35 cents would shift to the private sector in the form of uncompensated care.
• 6 cents would be lost in state tax revenue that would no longer be collected because the RIte Care cuts would reduce associated economic activity.
That would leave only 7 cents of true “savings,” the nonprofit found.
“This is actually a conservative estimate,” said Michael Miller, policy director at Community Catalyst, in a news release. “It doesn’t take into account other negative effects on the economy created by these cuts, including increased out-of-pocket spending for former enrollees, lost wages and reduced productivity due to a loss of coverage.”
Taking that into consideration, Miller added, “in the end the projected savings simply aren’t worth the hardships these cuts would cost in both human and economic terms.”
Dennis Roy, executive director of East Bay Community Action Program, which serves RIte Care beneficiaries, noted in the news release that RIte Care allows families to have a “medical home” and gives low-income children “a chance at being healthy.” It also brings “millions of federal dollars” into the economy, he added, which is especially important “during difficult financial times.”
Paiva-Weed said cutting RIte Care “is completely contrary to this state’s recent attempts to improve health care for all Rhode Islanders.”

For more information about RIte Care Works, go to www.ritecareworks.org.