As Governor Gary Herbert unveiled the Healthy Utah Plan to extend Medicaid eligibility to more of our neighbors in need he stated how “complex” this issue has become in the age of Obamacare.
These complexities now fall equally upon the good judgment of state legislators to discern. The ball is in their court.
How does a conservative state legislator wrap his mind around extending Medicaid eligibility even further? Perhaps I can help. I’m a conservative and I’m well familiar with policymaking. Conservatives must face some realities. As we did with state-based immigration reform, we need to get very practical. In that debate we first had to consider the rule of law. We needed to get the rule right before we could get the law right. A similar standard of analysis applies to the Healthy Utah Plan in extending Medicaid eligibility beyond current levels, especially inside the crazy world of Obamacare. We need to correctly understand the context of the governor’s proposal to correctly discern its sound application.
