As states move to save themselves from fiscal doom, they are beginning to target health-insurance programs for the working poor, as a way to significantly cut costs:
Pennsylvania is one of several destitute states seeking to help balance budgets by removing adults from government health insurance programs.
Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington, a Democrat, recently removed 17,500 adults covered under Basic Health, a state-financed plan for the working poor. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, proposes to remove up to 250,000 childless adults who have been insured by her state’s Medicaid program under a decade-long agreement with the federal government.
To restate a point from yesterday, rising health costs are most responsible for state deficits, and unfortunately, cutting participation is the easiest way to reduce those costs in the immediate short-term.
That said, this is why it's silly to think of "debt" in moral terms. For the last two years, we've run large deficits to guarantee health care for seniors and the poor, provide insurance to the unemployed, and keep millions of people employed across the public and private sector. Is this immoral? Because of health-care costs, we are facing a huge long-term debt load; would it be more moral to cut millions from needed health-care benefits? There simply isn't anything straightforwardly moral about reducing the debt, Andrew Sullivan notwithstanding.
For my part, I don't think there is anything particularly moral about "debt" either. The presence and absence of debt are accounting issues driven by systemic problems, not moral failure. We're dealing with budgets, not a crusade, and when we frame debt as a moral issue, it takes the conversation away from the most effective means to balance revenues and spending, and to a place where pundits and policy-makers vie to prove their moral "toughness" by targeting the vulnerable for as many cuts as possible.
