Always an Excuse for the Status Quo

A comment from the Poverty Institute's Linda Katz (no relation) in today's article about the sides "lining up" in the argument over the global Medicaid waiver expresses an increasingly common sentiment:

Rhode Island College's Poverty Institute policy director Linda Katz said it's a mistake to agree to a five-year spending cap without knowing what the state's needs could be.

"No one can see into the future," she said.

Katz suggested Rhode Island would not need such a drastic overhaul of its Medicaid program if Congress pumps an additional half a billion Medicaid dollars into the state, a possibility raised in a report issued this week by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families and the Center on Budget and Public Priorities.

Just so: Nobody can see into the future. The rational lesson of that conclusion is to prepare for the worst. That, as our crumbling society evidences, is not a lesson that Rhode Island has proven willing to hear. Every year has been one more exercise in wishful thinking, waiting for miracle windfalls.

That must change now. The economic clock is ticking.