Deficit?  What Deficit?

Roll Call is a newspaper and website published in Washington D C, when the United States Congress is in session, reporting news of legislative and political maneuverings on Capitol Hill.

Roll Call reports that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rolled out a new incentive for Medicaid providers to talk with patients about owning a gun.  CMS is allowing Medicaid funds to be dispensed when those queries are made. 

Why would doctors need funding to ask these questions? After all, asking a patient if they own a gun doesn't cost anything. Because, by opening up the Medicaid money spigot, the Biden administration is incentivizing healthcare professionals to ask these types of invasive questions. 

A CMS spokesperson said that while Medicaid first began allowing coverage of violence prevention-related services in 2021, the latest announcement clarifies that the coverage also includes “anticipatory guidance,” or health education and counseling to help parents and caregivers understand and improve the health and development of their children. 

“As a result, states may reimburse for a health care provider counseling parents on firearm safety and injury prevention,” the CMS spokesperson said. 

Of course, gun grabbers hope the conversations about guns will become routine. 

“The hope is that this normalizes this question as part of routine medical care,” said Chethan Sathya, a pediatric trauma surgeon and firearm injury prevention researcher at Northwell Health, the largest health care provider in New York. “When you start funding things, that is the huge incentive for hospitals and providers to integrate this into usual routine medical care, and it provides a revenue stream for that.”

Isn’t there a federal deficit problem?  Something like an accumulated deficit of $36 trillion…and growing.  The gun grabbing Left considers that deficit as only collateral damage in their war on gun rights.

Remember this the next time N Y State complains about the growing cost of Medicaid.