This Should Tell Us Something

The idea that the government should be involved in my health care has always been disconcerting to me. When I read Health care: You can’t give it away I was not sure whether I should laugh or cry. Apparently the state CHIP program is losing more families than they are adding even as they expand their budget to cover more kids. So we’re paying more for a program that is covering fewer kids because people are actively opting out faster than they are opting in. I think that should be a big red flag.

That’s the part that made me want to laugh. The part that made me want to cry was:

Judi Hilman, director of the Utah Health Policy Project, said it’s going to take a “Herculean” effort to combat the stigma that has equated subsidized health care with welfare in Utah. . .

“We need a whole strategic marketing campaign to put these programs in a more positive light,” Hilman said.

If the programs are so good for people why do the people they are designed to help choose not to participate? Secondly, and more importantly, what gives anyone the right to insist that those who are leaving or choosing not to partake should be choosing differently?

Another sentence from Ms. Hilman leads to one more question:

“These programs are absolutely essential if they [low-income families] are going to become permanently self-sufficient.”

The question is – where’s your proof?

I have been uninsured with a family of 5 to take care of and I didn’t use CHIP nor would it have helped me become “permanently self-sufficient.” I don’t mean to say that the program is useless, but I do think her statement is based on a whole range of unfounded assumptions – the kind of assumptions that lead to larger and less efficient government dragging our society towards fiscal slavery.