Not your finest hour, Governor

It was just swell of Butch Otter to step forward this week.

The governor wholeheartedly endorsed Proposition 2, the ballot measure that essentially calls for Medicaid expansion in Idaho.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” Otter said.

If you don’t know the basics already, the proposal would provide health insurance for people who fall in what has become known as “the gap.” That is, those who are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid as poverty victims, but don’t earn enough to afford private health insurance.

Several studies suggest that there may be 62,000 to 80,000 Idahoans in that dangerous gap.

Of those in the gap, it was determined in 2012 that about 67 percent had at least one working member in the household. Amazingly, that percentage has remained stable from year to year since that first serious look.

Check it out: The working poor represent almost 70 percent of “gappers” right now.

It also appears that the state would be far better off by implementing the expansion — offering coverage to those who need it, perhaps saving some critically needed rural hospitals, and even coming out ahead financially.

Yes, in real money.

National and statewide appraisals of the Medicaid expansion note that the federal government will pay 90 percent of coverage costs, that the state will be off the hook for uncompensated treatment (emergency rooms, for instance) and that the arrival of additional medical personnel will bring millions into Idaho’s economy.

ALL THESE obvious benefits — specifically the moral obligation of making sure thousands of Idahoans have health coverage — bring up an obvious question.

Why wasn’t Medicaid expansion “just the right thing to do” back in 2012, when Otter first created a task force of his own health and fiscal experts to study the program?

The group unanimously supported Idaho’s adoption of Medicaid expansion, basically for all the same reasons we’re hearing now.

And by the way, the feds were picking up 100 percent of the cost in 2012.

Otter thanked everyone for being so thorough, and then announced that there would be NO Medicaid expansion.

The reason, obviously, was ideology and nothing else.

Most Republican governors were against any form of Medicaid expansion, simply because it had grown out of the Affordable Care Act.

Under that name, perhaps all 50 states would have thanked the federal government for all that free money and jumped on the Medicaid bandwagon.

However, the legislation became known as Obamacare, which meant it was politically toxic to almost all Republicans — no matter the human cost or financial benefit.

OTTER WENT with the political wind just like the rest of them.

He said any Medicaid changes would need further study — total nonsense, of course, since he’d had his own experts look at every aspect of it.

And from that point until right now, both the governor and various groups in the Legislature have called for more and more studies.

The point, they said, was to produce an “Idaho solution” that lawmakers could claim fixed all the problems left over from the dreaded Obamacare.

But nothing has happened.

“We’ve tried, and tried, and tried to get it right,” said state Sen. Mary Souza, R-Coeur d’Alene. “In the last session, we got a health care bill through the Senate, but it wasn’t taken up in the House.”

Souza is opposed to Proposition 2, but at least for honest reasons.

SHE WORRIES that perhaps the financial hit will be more than expected, and that expanding Medicaid might act as an incentive not to strive for higher earnings.

Souza, though, is adamant that if Prop 2 passes, the Legislature should respect the will of the people.

She also concedes quite willingly that the very existence of the proposition means that the people of Idaho blame their lawmakers for failing them.

Meanwhile, I wonder if Otter ever thinks about the thousands of his constituents who have gone without medical treatment in the six years he’s been waffling.

This whole thing is terribly, terribly sad.

By the way, I don’t blame Republicans any more than Democrats, Independents, Libertarians or even the Whig party for our mess.

I blame this hideous war between parties and tribes, which has reached a point where no one in authority can do the right thing unless it’s politically helpful.

It’s a terrible illness, so now even Medicaid expansion may not get there in time to save the patient.

And that’s all of us lying on the sickbed.

•••

Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press.

A Brand New Day appears from Wednesday through Saturday each week.

Steve’s sports column on Gonzaga basketball runs on Tuesday.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

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