Medicaid expansion will help the needy

As the 2014 Legislative session looms, Gov. Gary Herbert and legislators will consider whether to expand Medicaid in the state to individuals living at less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level (i.e. making roughly $16,000 or less per year). Politicians and pundits have debated the issue for months, carefully considering economics, political convictions, and policy implications.

For Catholics, the issue is no less simple, but we look first and foremost to the principles or our faith, which focus on the dignity of the human being. Our Church teaches that every human being should have access to what is necessary to lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work, education, culture and the right to establish a family. When people lack such access, the proper function of civil authority is to make these items accessible.

That means government needs to play its part to help Sophia, a single mom with diabetes. Sophia works as a receptionist part time in a dental office. She is also raising two teenagers. When Sophia’s ex-husband removed her from his insurance, she was left to pay cash for doctor visits and regular medications. Prescription costs alone were over $600 per month. Her parents provided some financial help, but Sophia was unable to pay for her medications on a monthly basis, so stopped filling her prescriptions, except sporadically. That decision led to expensive emergency room visits.

Sophia received Medicaid for a short period, but was told she no longer qualified when she started making $800 a month. With her medical condition, she was unable to find private insurance, except in a high-risk pool at a cost of $650 per month.

Sophia is a human being equally deserving of access to health care. Utah’s state government is not solely responsible for her health care needs, but it has a vital role to play in helping her access care. By expanding Medicaid to the 138 percent level, Sophia would have affordable health care, including preventative treatment to manage her diabetes and avoid expensive emergency room care.

As Sophia’s case demonstrates, providing such coverage to the uninsured promotes the common good – a concept strongly supported by Catholic teaching. Sophia’s emergency room visits were ultimately paid for by all insured individuals. Similarly, when an uninsured individual contracts a communicable disease, the uninsured is not the only person at risk. Uninsured individuals have broad impacts on all Utahns. The state is in the best position to lessen those impacts by expanding Medicaid to cover uninsured Utahns who have no other options.

Catholic teaching also holds that we should not do for others what they are capable of doing for themselves. Medicaid expansion does not take away the ability of an individual to provide for their own health care when they are financially able. Expansion, however, recognizes that there are times in people’s lives when they are unable to provide for all of their basic needs without assistance. At those times, the state is the only organization in a position to provide affordable health care options to ensure treatable conditions, such as diabetes or heart problems, do not become life-threatening and exponentially more expensive problems.

Medicaid expansion is an opportunity for our state government to fill in a gap in health care coverage where thousands of individuals currently fall. Providing health care coverage will help Utah citizens avoid serious complications from otherwise treatable diseases, enabling them to become more productive citizens. It is an opportunity for the state to protect the public health – a proper function of state government.