Here is the text of the letter I wrote to the Commonwealth Medicaid Innovation and Reform Commission in their debate as to whether to accept Medicaid Expansion or not. You can write your own comments by sending an email to vamirc@mirc.virginia.gov. They don't ask for a location, and they don't accept 'form' letters, so use what's below to write your own.
To the Commissioners,
Thank you very much for the opportunity to comment.
I would like to point out three important things that tend to get lost in the partisan debate about whether or not to expand Medicaid.
Follow me below the fold for the rest.
Firstly, the Federal Government is covering 90% of the cost in perpetuity and as the issuer of the currency of the United States of America, is not fiscally constrained when it comes to, most especially, internal payments. It is never the case that there are any fundamental restrictions on the Federal Government’s ability to mint currency and as can be seen in the references I give below, there is – at very best – an incredibly weak correlation between the amount of money the government prints and inflation. Further, since the Medicaid dollars go firstly to Commonwealth employees and Medicaid recipients, the stimulative effect of these dollars will be immense. Dollars given to the poor and middle class have velocity, a property which means that their economic effect is larger, the greater the velocity. So, there is little to no danger of affecting the Nation’s overall economy by accepting these funds.
Second, expanding Medicaid means that there is an economic opportunity for Virginia in terms of free money coming in from the Federal Government. This is money that funds Medicaid expansions at 100% for the first few years and 90% thereafter, again in perpetuity. This is a huge boon to the Commonwealth in that this money is income that will end up directly in the pockets of the poor in the case of recipients and the middle class, in the case of the Commonwealth employees who will be funded through these monies. Our Commonwealth taxes are, regrettably fairly regressive, but this just means that the recipients and administrators will be paying more taxes to the Commonwealth than if we were to refuse such Federal largesse. So, not only will we not be hurting our Nationwide economy by accepting the funds, we will be running our Commonwealth’s economy at a level lower than it could be running if we do refuse the funds.
Thirdly, if we refuse these funds, we are doing the poorest of our fellow Virginians, Red, Blue or Independent a huge moral disservice. By refusing to aid those Virginians most in need, we act in a manner not in accordance with any major religious teaching. Jesus loved the poor, not the rich moneylenders. It is our moral duty simply by virtue of our ability to do so, to do what we can to ease the burden of poverty to all Virginians, whether we think they deserve their plight or not. Jesus did not say to help the poor, but only if they deserve it. He commanded us to help the poor regardless of the circumstances surrounding their decent into poverty and we can, and we should live up to that goal, whether we be Christian, Baha’i, Muslim, atheist or any other religion or lack thereof.
Thank you very much for your time,
References:
https://www.crawford.anu.edu.au/...
http://www.mwpweb.eu/...
http://www.imf.org/...