Gov. Gary Herbert's Healthy Utah plan on Wednesday got its first good news of the legislative session: a Senate committee recommended the bill that would enact his Medicaid expansion effort.Read up, folks:
The Senate Health and Human Services Committee voted 5-1 for SB164, proposed by Sen. Brian Shiozawa, R-Cottonwood Heights. It would extend health insurance to an estimated 95,000 low-income Utah adults, two-thirds of whom can't get subsidies under the Affordable Care Act or qualify for Medicaid. Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden, is a member of the committee but left the room before the vote. His own bill, SB153, would extend health insurance to [only] an estimated 10,000 people who are both poor and medically frail.
"It's the first step," Shiozawa, a physician, said afterward.
"The difference in money coming back to Utah from the federal government is stark," Shiozawa said. "$3.2 billion under Healthy Utah over the first five years versus $300,000 under Christensen's SB153. By 2021, Utahns and Utah businesses will be sending more than $700 million in Affordable Care Act taxes to Washington each year, and Healthy Utah is a way to get much of it back," he said.
Down in the Tribune reader comments section, Trib reader rorybreaker hits the nail squarely on the head:
Just admit it Cons, you have a choice to do the right thing or cut off your nose to spite your face.Yes, indeed. It's time for our Utah legislature to "Choose the Right," wethinks
3 comments:
I think if some democrat would put all items of the ACA into a package and call it Palincare and present it, it would easily pass.
It certainly would be the humane and statesmanly thing for the Legislature to do, which of course is why they probably won't do it. Ain't a real statesman in the whole damn sorry lot of them.
Yo Rudi, why did you leave off the "W" in the CTR thing? Here in Utah I think it is actually CTRW - Choose The Right Wing.
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