The Rights of the Wisconsin Taxpayer

This past week in Wisconsin, a state that Hillary Clinton never visited in 2016 when she needed to and thus lost it -- and the election -- the governor, Scott Walker, put forth a proposal of interest.  Gov. Walker asked that all Medicaid recipients be periodically drug-tested to ensure that they were clean and get help if they weren't.

Now, people like yours truly were a bit shocked to discover that people receiving that kind of aid from the Federal government and the states (i.e., means-tested, as opposed to Social Security) were not already tested to make sure they were not blowing their neighbors' hard-earned taxpayer money on illegal drugs.

But others, well, not so much.  One individual whose name slips my slippery memory described the proposal as a terrible thing, in that it made drug addiction "a moral failing" that should not be punished by suspending Medicaid.  He didn't comment on the moral status of drug use.

Now, as we know, Medicaid is a Federally-funded, state-contributed and maintained program for people whose incomes are too low to afford health insurance, for whatever reason.  I don't know of anyone who is on it, so I can't speak to how it compares in efficiency to Medicare, the seniors insurance I am on, or the VA system, which couldn't be any less efficient.

But either way, Medicaid is a system where other people work to earn money to pay your health insurance because, for whatever reason, you cannot afford it.

That means there is a matter here of stewardship, i.e., as a recipient of someone else's money, you have an obligation to treat it respectfully, and that means that if you're going to receive health insurance paid for by other people involuntarily, you have some level of obligation not to make it more of a problem than it already is.

So my gut supports Gov. Walker on this, with some reservation.  It is a moral failing to take illegal drugs in the first place.  It is a moral failing to do it again to the point of addiction.  It is a moral failing to expect someone else to pay for the insurance to treat your moral failing.

But it is the outcome that I think is the tough discussion.  That is, what do we do if we implement this program and a Medicaid recipient fails a drug test?  Well, that gets back to the purpose of the testing program itself.  If the purpose of the program is to identify addicts so they can get treated -- and not to remove them from Medicaid -- then I am OK with it.  Medicaid recipients are a special class of people whom others are taxed to support.

I say that because such a program could move on to add further moves on Medicaid recipients that might be an issue, such as overseeing, I don't know, sugar intake.  In the hands of Democrats, that's power I don't want to see.

So yes, I do hope that Gov. Walker is successful, as long as the outcome is identifying people who have illegal drug issues and pushing them to treatment.  Perhaps that can be tied to the law enforcement side as well somehow to cut the supply of illegal drugs.  But I do agree -- test taxpayer-aid recipients and have a reasonable program to get addiction treatment for them. 

Cut the cycle, treat the addiction.  Lower the need for treatment, drop the cost.  Maybe catch a few dozen dealers while we're at it.  Better for all.


Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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