“Now, sick people, their families and health care providers are battling a tangled corporate Medicaid bureaucracy directed by out-of-state MCOs that routinely delay or deny care and payments. We were told modernization would miraculously shrink our state appropriation, but that’s seemingly not the case. And nobody can clearly explain why, not even with the help of modern technology.
We don’t even have transparent public oversight, let alone the power to fix it. That doesn’t seem better.
We had a 40-year-old collective bargaining system that could have used some smart adjustments. Instead, it’s been stripped to the bone, and Iowans who teach our kids, guard prison inmates and plow snow-covered roads lost most of their rights to negotiate pay, benefits and other working conditions.
Voting is being made more difficult and confusing in the name of fighting “fraud.” This fraud is real and modern like those flying cars.
Instead of boosting sales taxes to address one of our many modern problems, such as cleaning up dirty water or paying for better mental health services, the Legislature and Reynolds expanded sales taxes to pay for cuts to corporate and personal income taxes. And they’re cutting taxes at a time when our universities have been hit with waves of budget cuts and K-12 public school funding isn’t keeping up even with the rate of inflation.
Education was once considered a strong modernizing force here in Iowa, an investment in a better future. Now, nothing beats tax cuts. We’ve piled them up to the tune of billions over the last two decades. It’s been a boon for the jet-set.”
Dorman Cedar Rapids Gazette Column: Iowa’s been ‘modernized,’ but is it better?
By Todd Dorman
October 8, 2018
This fall, Iowa voters, be sure to ask your Statehouse candidates whether “modernization” is right for you.
After all, it’s been the go-to prescription in recent years, recommended by former Gov. Terry Branstad, current Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republicans running the Legislature. There’s nothing like a spoonful of modernization to help some very strong medicine go down.
Side effects? Never mind.