The controversy over Medicaid coverage in Mississippi is calming down, but it is far from over.

With benefits restored to 50,000 PLADs &045;&045; those recipients in Medicaid’s poverty level aged and disabled category &045;&045; Gov. Haley Barbour, acting every bit the politician, blamed the &uot;chaos&uot; on a lawsuit filed to help restore the benefits.

But this situation was a mess from the start, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. Whether it was a lack of information from the governor’s administration or too much information from opponents looking to incite fear, some of Mississippi’s most disadvantaged citizens were left confused, frightened and more than likely abandoned by the state that promised to care for them.

Barbour’s administration, looking to save money for the cash-strapped state, got the Legislature to pass the bill that cut Medicaid benefits earlier this year. That drew an uproar from health care advocates who worried about those who would be left without coverage, especially for prescription drugs.

Coming in the middle of a federal public relations campaign about new Medicare prescription drug cards scheduled to take effect just more than a year from now, the state’s actions just made everything more confusing.

Barbour later secured federal waivers for some of the PLADs, but it was just before the original deadline to remove them from coverage.

In the end, the state has really saved no money &045;&045; and the situation, though the education of recipients and the lawsuits, may have cost us more.

We hope Barbour’s administration and the Legislature have both learned some lessons from the whole affair.

If you’re going to make such drastic cuts, it’s a good idea to have the plan already in place to take care of them &045;&045; and especially a plan to notify them and give them the tools they need to find other coverage.

But first and foremost, saving money on the backs of poor people is not only bad politics, it’s immoral.