A race to be cruelest

It appears that Arkansas is near the top of another list: how quickly states are removing people from Medicaid coverage now that the covid emergency is officially over. Florida seems to be leading in numbers, cutting about a quarter of a million people (remember, Gov. Ron DeSantis runs that show), but Arkansas seems to be leading for speed. According to The Hill, a publication on politics and policy, Arkansas “will speed through the redetermination process in only six months, citing cost concerns and the goal of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) to push people to ‘escape the trap of government dependency’.” (Governor Sanders published an op-ed on this in The Wall Street Journal that I cannot access.) We reportedly cut 72,000 people in April, the first month it could be done, including 27,000 children. The reinstatement procedure is not going well due to the complexity of state procedures that reportedly require a Ph.D. to decipher. The dust from this mess has not settled.

The Biden administration has urged that states go slow in this process, but you can imagine how well that suggestion has played here.

Beyond the cruelty involved, this is very bad economic policy. In an earlier letter, I cited a Washington Post story showing how bad credit scores, caused mostly by medical debt, followed state refusal to accept the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Keeping citizens medically impoverished reduces their ability to make purchases or investments. It also threatens the survival of small hospitals.

Heaven forbid that low-income Arkansans should be able to access taxpayer-supported medical assistance; it would surely destroy their God-given right to perish with their self-respect intact.

ROGER A. WEBB

Little Rock