To the Editor:

State Sen. Adam Ebbin’s constituent report highlighted the proposed state Medicaid expansion which has forced a special session because the legislature’s two houses, under the control of different parties, cannot reach agreement. In this liberal state senate district, most constituents likely support Senator Ebbin’s stance.

For sound public policy, we need to deconstruct Medicaid supporters’ assertions, particularly since the interests pushing states toward this Medicaid expansion assured the public that President Obama’s 2009 trillion-dollar stimulus would stanch unemployment at 8 percent when it ended up over 10 percent and abbreviate the downturn whose effects linger still, and who years later sheepishly admitted a lot of those “shovel-ready” projects weren’t shovel-ready.

Adding benefits is fine so long as you don’t have to pay for them. Medicaid supporters insist expanding Medicaid will create jobs and boost the economy. They haven’t bothered to mention or haven’t yet figured out that every dime the federal government gives states to expand Medicaid comes straight from the federal deficit. Were the federal government to increase taxes or otherwise raise revenue to pay for expanded Medicaid, money would be taken out of the economy which would cause jobs elsewhere in the economy to be lost. The jobs Medicaid spending would create would be cancelled out by the jobs higher taxes would destroy. Expanding Medicaid is merely a way to divert attention from deficit spending by laundering the deficit into health care for the working poor.

Medicaid supporters note that organizations representing big business support Medicaid expansion. Why would they not when many profit from buying and financing the national debt? Moreover, many low-wage businesses don’t provide health care, so are quite happy to pass the costs of their employees’ health onto taxpayers. How can legislators insist that having the public underwrite the stingy benefit model many businesses nowadays employ is anything but a Faustian bargain?

Because this isn’t sustainable, either states will be left holding the bag with a big benefit program it will be politically hard to eliminate if funding dries up, or the state or federal government will have to hike taxes to pay for it with recessionary consequences.

Dino Drudi

Alexandria