Medicaid could be reduced; and deliver the voter rolls

State Comptroller Sean Scanlon warns that Connecticut’s state budget is in danger of being devoured by its Medicaid program, whose costs are soaring even as federal aid to the program is being reduced. To ensure that the state’s approximately one million Medicaid recipients maintain their health insurance coverage, Scanlon says "every option should be on the table.”

But Scanlon doesn’t really mean that. He means that every possibility for raising more money for Medicaid should be considered, not every possibility for economizing.

There are obvious opportunities for economizing.

Since Connecticut is a “sanctuary state, a state facilitating and extolling illegal immigration, many recipients of Medicaid and other forms of state medical insurance are illegal immigrants and there is clamor to make still more illegal immigrants eligible. Of course the more that illegal immigrants are made eligible, the more other illegal immigrants will be drawn to the state. State government could save millions by disqualifying illegal immigrants from state insurance and all state government benefits. Like all people, they go where they are subsidized.

Even Califormia, the most populous “sanctuary state,” is reducing state medical insurance for illegal immigrants because of its exploding cost.

How about reducing state financial grants to Planned Parenthood, which provides most abortions in Connecticut? Most are performed on poor women who qualify for Medicaid. State govermment has given much money to Planned Parenthood and Governor Lamont just awarded the organization another $10 million from the emergency $500 million slush fund the General Assembly recently created for him.

But Connecticut’s chapter of Planned Parenthood has an endowment of nearly $50 million and is in better financial condition than state government itself. So state grants to Planned Parenthood could be suspended until the organization spends its endowment down to, say, $10 million.

Most important, to reduce Medicaid costs state government should examine the causes of poverty that arise from mistaken public policy. After all, Medicaid is insurance for the poor. If, as state Comotroller Scanlon says, about a million state residents are on Medicaid, that is more than a quarter of the state’s population, and if Medicaid expenses are soaring, it’s partly because poverty in Connecticut is soaring as well, even as government spends much in the state in the name of reducing poverty.

Could someone 1n state government, maybe even the comptroller himself, ask why poverty is worsening?

Is it because so many Connecticut residents lack job skills?

The state’s economy long has lagged the national economy and is not creating jobs, particularly high-skilled and high-paying jobs, as fast as many other states are. So how come?

Connecticut has a high cost of living, which makes people poor, so where is state govemment’s program to reduce that cost? Who in authority is reviewing state govermment’s costs to ensure that all spending is essential and efficient?

Of course it’s always much easier to increase Medicaid spending instead.

* Why should Connecticut be refusing to give its voter registration rolls to the U.S. Justice Department for its investigation of possible election fraud? The Justice Department has had to sue for it.

Connecticut’s own freedom-of-information law makes most of the data public. Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas says the Justice Department also wants the voter registration data that shows Social Security and driver's license numbers, which state law forbids disclosino outside govermment.

But the federal govermment already has all Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers are typically available to the federal government through law enforcement data banks.

So it seems that Thomas and state Attorney General William Tong oppose providing the data simply because they detest the Trump administration and don’t want it to pursue the possibility of election fraud.

If there’s no fraud and no illegal immigrants have registered to vote in Connecticut, disclosure of the voter roll data may help confirm that. And if the data does provide evidence of fraud, shouldn t it be disclosed even if that scares the secretary and the attorney general?

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. ([email protected])