TRUTH, JUSTICE AND "THE UTAH WAY"

by Paul Gibbs

In the fight for Healthy Utah I've gotten used to the fact that some people simply will not be convinced. I say "will not" rather than "can not" very deliberately. This is a choice they've made. No matter what evidence or logic is presented, they choose not to hear or see it if it conflicts with their views. While many view sticking to your convictions as integrity, I would submit that doing so against all evidence and logic cannot be considered integrity when it does harm to other people. And in this case, it's doing a lot of harm.

One of the most outspoken opponents of Medicaid expansion/Healthy Utah has been Health Reform Task Force co-chair Allen Christensen. He remains unconvinced and unmoved by economic studies, stories from people in the coverage gap, pleas from Salt Lake County, or anything else. He has questioned whether the needy people in the coverage gap even exist, and then defends himself, saying "We're not heartless here". With all due respect, Senator, your other words speak much louder to those who are struggling to stay alive.

In a recent op-ed to the Salt Lake Tribune, Christensen insists that taking federal Medicaid expansion money is not "The Utah Way", and says that "Those who stand to gain by accepting federal dollars, borrowed from our grandchildren, have orchestrated a media campaign to convince us that we can’t pass up this "free" money." Sen. Christensen has seen Entitled to Life and was not impressed by it, and Entitled to Life is very much a part of the current "media campaign", and as such I feel the need to respond to his words: I stand to gain nothing from Healthy Utah. I have private insurance and will not be eligible for anything under the expansion (and I sincerely thank God every day for this fact). I have turned down multiple opportunities to make money from Entitled to Life (profit or even reimbursement for the money and time I put into it). I don't stand to make one cent or one pill off of this. I'm doing it because my Mother and Grandmother, the best Utahns I've ever known, showed me as I grew up that helping other people was always the right thing to do. My grandmother sheltered Vietnamese refugees in her home and made a family legacy of caring for the mentally challenged which my mother and sisters continued. My mother ran an organization which provided food for those who struggled financially, and gave me one of my best Christmases when she decided we should go to the family homeless shelter to give out toys. They raised me to believe the "Utah Way" was to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is why I made the film entirely of my own initiative, and why since deciding to make the film I've been so honored to work with the amazing people at Voices For Utah Children and the Utah Health Policy Project, who like me are using media to spread awareness, even though none of us will gain anything but what all Utahns will: Healthy friends and neighbors, brothers and sisters who no longer have to go to the ER because it's the only place where they can't be turned away, or simply be faced with going without medical care. I'm sorry that Sen. Christensen seems unable to understand that people might want to help others merely because we consider it the right thing to do, but it's the truth.


As for Sen. Christensen's assertion that charities can do the job of Medicaid, there are a lot of problems with that: first is the fact that my mother died penniless with Medicaid as the only thing that allowed her to receive care, because the charities who promised to help with the close to $1 million in medical bills my twin brother and I accrued before the age of 5 kept more of the money they raised than they gave her. I love charities, but they can hardly be considered the perfect panacea Christensen seems to think they are. My second reason is a huge amount of charity fundraising for my own surgeries yielded about $10,000, which was wonderful, but nowhere near enough to get me a $79,000 surgery. My third is that the free clinics he speaks of are only equipped to provide basic care, not the sort of advanced care so many people need. Creating a system of free clinics that could provide MRIs, chemotherapy, etc would at best take a very long time. And while former Utah State Senator Dan Liljenquist commented in his recent Deseret News op-ed that "some are frustrated" with how long the decision process has been, I submit that this is an absurd understatement. Some are not "frustrated". Some are dying. If you don't believe this, watch my film. You should be able to find it, it's out there as part of an orchestrated media campaign.