Politics is about control. The more areas of society that are politicized, the more control the political class lords over its citizens. Everything from education, to healthcare, to energy, to transportation, to commerce to aid for the needy have become highly politicized. Citizens have become excessively dependent upon the government to provide for these services.
The best way to exercise control over people is to make them dependent upon you. Which brings us to this week’s Bad Bill of the Week: House Bill 1073, Expand Medicaid Eligibility.
Sponsored by Reps. John Ager (D-Buncombe), Verla Insko (D-Orange), Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford) and Susan C. Fisher (D-Buncombe), this bill would expand Medicaid in North Carolina as laid out in Obamacare.
These bill sponsors would likely claim publicly that Medicaid expansion would be a compassionate measure to provide health insurance coverage to low-income citizens – roughly 500,000 of them, according to the bill.
But the raw truth is that this would make half a million more North Carolinians substantially more dependent on the government – and therefore far easier to control.
“You want to keep your health coverage? You better vote for us!” will be the refrain every election year.
Moreover, Medicaid expansion would serve to steepen the “welfare cliff” confronted by many low-income households. This is an effect whereby – on the margins – people face losing valuable government benefits if they choose additional or higher-paying work. Accepting more work or a better job would actually make them worse off. “You better stay poor or you’ll lose your health coverage!”
The cycle of dependency, and thus political control, deepens.
“But Medicaid expansion would draw down billions in federal dollars, and those dollars will create tens of thousands of jobs,” insist Medicaid expansion supporters.
This sentiment, however, is based on faulty assumptions. As explained last year in this Civitas Institute article:
The job growth claims are based on the state’s “drawing down” additional federal funds due to Medicaid expansion … This income received by health care providers is then spent on suppliers (such as medicine, medical supplies, etc.) and in their community on goods and services such as groceries, clothes and movies.
The fatal flaw in this methodology, however, is that in order to “draw down” federal Medicaid dollars, actual medical services need to be provided to Medicaid patients. It is only when doctors actually treat Medicaid patients that the federal government pays those providers for the services.
One problem, however, is that Medicaid is already stretched thin, with too many patients chasing too few doctors. North Carolina’s Medicaid program has added a whopping 800,000 additional patients in the last dozen years – at a time when the number of Medicaid providers has decreased. Expansion would add as many as half a million more patients by some estimates. How does a shrinking pool of doctors provide care for 1.3 million additional patients?
With newly eligible Medicaid patients unable to see doctors, services won’t be provided and when no service is provided, no federal funds are “drawn down.” The assumptions backing up the job growth claims don’t reflect the very real supply constraints in the Medicaid program.
Dependency breeds control. The political class knows this. “To control the people, first make them dependent upon you.”
Medicaid, like so many other government programs, fosters greater government dependency, which makes citizens – especially low-income citizens – far easier to control. Which is just how the political class likes it.
For these reasons, House Bill 1073 is this week’s Bad Bill of the Week.
1. “The best way to exercise control over people is to make them dependent upon you.”
A typical cynical NCCivitas comment.
2. “This sentiment, however, is based on faulty assumptions. As explained last year in this Civitas Institute article”
NCCivitas backs up its claims with a NCCivitas article! … a new low for this site…
Incoherent as usual.
Gee, how can government health insurance be failing its customers as badly as government schools and everything else the government touches?
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2016/05/12/Obamacare-Costs-Go-Insurers-Drop-Out-and-Consumers-Get-Screwed
It’s inexplicable, I tells ya, inexplicable!
Gee, how could people ever have gotten so cynical about the government’s motives, George?
http://www.cityam.com/235517/socialism-has-created-a-humanitarian-disaster-in-venezuela
Of course, that could never happen here in the USA, right?
Right?
This is why the Gimmedats are so incompetent.
The percentage of each past president’s cabinet… who had worked in the private business sector…prior to their appointment to the cabinet.You know what the private business sector is: a real-life business…not a government job. Here are the percentages.
38% T. Roosevelt
40% Taft
52% Wilson
49% Harding
48% Coolidge
42% Hoover
50% F. D. Roosevelt
50% Truman
57% Eisenhower
30% Kennedy
47% Johnson
53% Nixon
42% Ford
32% Carter
56% Reagan
51% GH Bush
39% Clinton
55% GW Bush
8% Obama
This helps explain the bias, if not the incompetence, of this current administration: ONLY 8% of them…have ever worked in private business! That’s right! Only eight percent—the least, by far, of the last 19 presidents! And these people are trying to tell our corporations how to run their business? How can the president of a major nation and society, the one with the most successful economic system in world history, stand and talk about business when he’s never worked for one? Or about jobs when he has never really had one? And, when it’s the same for 92% of his senior staff and closest advisers? They’ve spent most of their time in academia, government, and/or non-profit jobs or as “community organizers.”
Another example of how the leftards just don’t get it:
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/233468/
It’s inexplicable, I tells ya, inexplicable!
Hillary is dumbfounded by why her socialistism isn’t working.You would think after years of failure the socialists,progressives,liberals,or what ever name they come up with next would figure out this way of government doesn’t work.Sadly,it’s a mental disorder and Hillary just can’t understand why it’s not working.Ostupid,Pelosi,and the Gimmedats told us you could put millions of people on this program and it would not cost anything.Tell me that is not mental illness.
Now the Commie running the VA is comparing life-saving health care to an amusement park… seriously!
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/va-chief-disney-doesnt-measure-wait-times-so-why-should-we/article/2592021
George, someday when you’re waiting in line the way millions already are in Venezuela (and Cuba) for your beloved Commie government to give you some desperately needed life-saving medicine or an organ transplant or surgery for your cancer before it metastasizes, remember that you did this to yourself. We warned you this would happen, and you heard it here today: what the Commies in charge of the VA are doing to those poor veterans for whom they’re supposed to be caring right now, Commies will likewise one day do to you. What you’ve sowed, you shall reap, you cruel and heartless parasite.