Medicaid is a long-standing federal program by which the federal government pays 70 percent and the states pay 30 percent to provide free health care to low-income people. For many decades, Medicaid in Utah has covered all children in households earning less than $57,000 for a family of four. But adults in households with children have been covered by Medicaid only if their household income is under $11,500 for a family of four. And adults with no children have been ineligible for Medicaid regardless of their income.

The ACA was designed so that all adults making less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level ($32,913 for a family of four), with or without children, would be covered by Medicaid. To make this new, expanded coverage affordable to the states, the federal government agreed to pay 90 percent of the cost of the new people who would be covered by Medicaid expansion, with the states paying 10 percent. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the federal government cannot force states to expand Medicaid as contemplated under the ACA. Compliance with the ACA's Medicaid expansion has therefore become voluntary for each state. Approximately half of the states so far have opted for Medicaid expansion.

Opponents of Medicaid expansion argue that Medicaid is an expensive, inefficient government program that fails to pay medical providers a fair rate for services. For this reason, many providers simply refuse to see Medicaid patients. Based on these concerns, Gov. Herbert proposed to use the federal money that would be paid under Medicaid expansion to instead pay health insurance premiums so that the expansion population can purchase private health insurance. After nearly two years of negotiating, the federal government has agreed to allow Gov. Herbert's plan.

Utah House members who oppose Healthy Utah worry that, even with the federal government paying 90 percent of costs, the program will still be too expensive for the state. House members also argue that because more than 50 of the 75 representatives oppose Healthy Utah, it would be futile to hold debate on the bill.

As I have stated publicly for months, I support the Healthy Utah Plan. I believe it provides the greatest benefits to Utah at the lowest overall cost. Because the discussions by the Utah House on this issue to date have been held in closed Republican caucus meetings, the public has not been able to hear and understand the issues being debated. The debate is fundamentally about whether we should create a new government benefit for low-income people that is admittedly going to cost Utah taxpayers additional money.

I realize that reasonable Utahns can disagree on that question. My discussions with my constituents lead me to believe that most Utahns are willing to accept and pay for Healthy Utah. Public debate of the plan by the House will allow legislators and their constituents to make this decision in an informed and deliberative manner.

I respectfully urge the Utah House of Representatives to hold a public debate and discussion on the Healthy Utah Plan and on any other possible alternatives to the question of Medicaid expansion.

The post Guest editorial: It’s time to move forward on Healthy Utah appeared first on Park Record.

The idea of the program is to attract investors to fund the pre-K programs and then pay back their investments with a five to ten percent rate of return if, and only if, the enrolled students test at grade level within two to three years. The rationale for the proposal is that taxpayers will save money over the long run if the early intervention eliminates the need for years of expensive remedial classes in later grades for the students.

In the 24 hours from the time the committee agenda was publicly posted on Wednesday to the beginning of the Thursday morning committee hearing on the bill, the 15 members of the House Education Committee (including me) received over 500 e-mails from Utah citizens regarding the bill.

Approximately 100 of the e-mails supported the bill, while the other 400 e-mails opposed it. The 100 e-mails in favor of the bill were organized by the United Way, which is helping to promote the "high-quality preschool" model.

The 400 e-mails against the bill were orchestrated by the Utah Eagle Forum, which has historically opposed any government involvement in preschool.

The members of the Eagle Forum are vigorously fighting the bill because they believe that children should be educated at home by their parents, that early childhood instruction produces negligible benefits, and that the program will grow to become a universal and costly preschool system for all students.

What fascinated me was the timing of the e-mail campaigns. The United Way was obviously watching carefully to see if the bill would be added to the Thursday Education Committee agenda.

Once the bill was placed on the agenda on Wednesday morning, the e-mails from United Way supporters began arriving within minutes.

But then, later in the afternoon, an even heavier blitz of opposing e-mails largely from Eagle Forum members started to arrive. These negative e-mails continued consistently throughout the night and even into the early morning hours, right up through the convening of the committee meeting.

Madison's lesson in Federalist 10 is that factions, or what we today call interest groups, often combine in very effective ways to commandeer a system of popular government against the larger public interest.

Madison argues that the most effective safeguard against this danger is to design a system by which elected representatives answer to a large number of citizens, thereby refining and enlarging the "factious tempers" held by a few.

Only a small fraction of the 500 e-mails regarding the preschool bill were from my constituents.

I listened carefully to the testimony at the committee hearing for and against the bill. At the conclusion of the debate, I joined the majority of the committee in voting 13 to 3 to pass the bill favorably, because I was persuaded of the benefits of the proposal and saw few drawbacks.

I believe the committee members successfully modeled Madison's constitutional principle of representing the public interest in the face of a vigorous, organized "factious combination."

The vote of the committee members is even more remarkable when one considers that Utah's party nomination process for legislative seats rests in the hands of a very few delegates, whose selection is always vulnerable to control by highly-motivated and well-organized interest groups such as the Utah Eagle Forum.

The post Guest Editorial: State legislators get blitzed by special interest factions appeared first on Park Record.