Newport News Sheriff says Medicaid expansion would reduce crime

Feb. 27--NEPORT NEWS -- Sheriff Gabe Morgan on Wednesday was the face of a national law enforcement group that is pressing state lawmakers to expand Medicaid eligibility in Virginia.

At a press conference Morgan said people don't always connect health care to incarceration and criminal activity. But, he said, affordable health insurance for low-income and working-class parents translates to lower rates of crime among those parents' children.

Morgan and Petersburg Police Chief John Dixon made the case as the state's Democrat-led Senate and Republican-led House seem deadlocked over whether to widen the reach of Medicaid.

The two men touted a report from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a law enforcement group, that says Medicaid expansion would mean more and earlier screening of pregnant women for alcohol and substance abuse, and therefore fewer children born with birth defects, including fetal alcohol syndrome.

"One study found that 60 percent of adolescents and adults who were born with fetal alcohol syndrome had trouble with the law, and 35 percent had been incarcerated," the report says. It estimates that 200 children with the syndrome are born in Virginia each year.

"We have to be smart on crime ... so children don't end up in facilities like mine," said Morgan, whose office runs the city's jail.

For his part, Morgan said he's been pressing the flesh and pushing lawmakers to adopt some form of Medicaid expansion, even if it's a smaller eligibility increase than that being pushed by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

"I'm talking to everyone who will listen, and everyone in our (legislative) delegation," he said.

"There's two methodologies competing and I don't care" which one prevails, he said, as long as it increases health care services for families raising at-risk children.

What he didn't say is that there's also a chance that opposition to Medicaid expansion from House GOP leaders will mean the state continues to do without federal funding for an increase. That money was made available through the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare as it's often called.

A spokesman for House Speaker William Howell said Wednesday that the GOP leader remains skeptical about current Medicaid spending and the potential expansion, both of which he called "direct threats to Virginia's public safety and law enforcement budgets."

"Medicaid has grown by 1,600 percent over the last 30 years and it now consumes over 21 percent of our state budget," said the spokesman, Matt Moran. "The growth of Medicaid is crowding out other core services of government -- including public safety."

Moran said accepting a Medicaid expansion today could leave Virginia on the hook for "more than $1 billion per year in new spending" down the line.

It's unclear if law enforcement support for an expansion will provide cover for enough Republicans to vote to expand the safety net.

Medicaid expansion has been a top legislative priority for McAuliffe, and the governor has said that those who reject it are merely sending a pool of federal tax dollars that Virginians paid into to other states.

Under the new health care law, the federal government has offered to cover all the cost of potential expansions through 2016, and 90 percent of the costs after that.

The Fight Crime: Invest in Kids study estimates that 98,000 parents in Virginia would become eligible for health care coverage under an expansion.

The study further states that 25 percent of those parents have children who are eligible but not signed up for insurance. It speculates that those children would get signed up if their newly eligible parents signed up themselves.

Shapiro can be reached by phone at 757-247-4744.

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