A "HEALTHY" MARRIAGE

by Paul Gibbs

Sometimes I have a hard time coming up with new angles to address the issue of Medicaid expansion/Healthy Utah, and have difficulty updating this blog because of it. That's why I'm grateful for the Sutherland Institute (motto: "Facts? We don't need no stinking facts."). Every time they lose traction on their previous specious arguments against accepting the federal funds, they dig down deep and come up with something even less genuine that will play to conservative fears. This time (because they're still working on an explanation for how Healthy Utah would spread Ebola) they're trying to protect that favorite battleground of Utah conservatives, marriage.

The argument made is really just a variation of the old "dependence" argument made by hard core conservatives against any form of government sponsored help for the poor. They're saying now that Medicaid expansion (or Healthy Utah, which is the only real option currently under consideration) will cause men to delay getting married because they'll be afraid of losing their eligibility. This is absurd for a number of obvious reasons: being married won't exclude people from Healthy Utah eligibility. And if their income level rises high enough from marriage that they no longer qualify for Healthy Utah, but don't get insurance from either spouse's employment, they will almost certainly be eligible for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. That's how it works, though I wouldn't expect Sutherland to know that. Their previous criticisms of the ACA clearly demonstrate a total lack of understanding of the law they hate so much.

My wife and I got engaged on December 26, 2011. We were married on June 26, 2013. During this time, people would whisper about "the longest engagement ever" and wonder if we were ever actually going to get married. We wanted to. We never questioned that. But with my income added to hers (at a temp job which lasted well over a year and offered no benefits), I would no longer qualify for Medicaid, and while our two incomes together would pay rent on a small apartment, they wouldn't pay for the monthly supply of anti-rejection medications needed for my transplanted kidney. I'm not saying it wouldn't pay for both, mind you. I'm saying it wouldn't even pay for JUST MY PILLS, which cost the same per month as a two bedroom apartment in L.A. (and here I'm only counting the most expensive of the three types of  anti-rejection meds I take, to say nothing at all of the other meds I take to deal with the side effects of the anti-rejection meds). We looked for more lucrative employment for me, even though I was still suffering through a particularly difficult period of medication side effects and other issues that would have made full-time work very hard on me. When I lost out on getting a job that would have made it possible for us to get married in the summer of 2012 we were devastated. It was like dealing with a death in the family. During all this time, Healthy Utah would have been a godsend. With it's eligibility levels allowing incomes well above what traditional Medicaid does (which is the whole reason for expansion), it would have allowed us to get married, keep working, and get to the point where we had our own private insurance. Eventually, we refused to put it off any longer, and we got married, having no idea what we were going to do. As difficult as it became when Becky was laid off from her job shortly after our marriage began, the fact that it made our combined income so low probably saved my kidney. We both kept searching for full time work, and eventually she found it, including an insurance plan which covers my meds. Once again I was extremely fortunate in a way most people aren't. But if Healthy Utah had been in place, we would have been married within six months or less. We might already have the child we so badly want. And we certainly wouldn't have stopped looking for work, because Healthy Utah wouldn't pay our rent or feed or clothe us or anything else. We would have worked to support ourselves and our children, because we would have been able to do so without dealing with jumping through the endless hoops, delays and obstacles associated with being sick and uninsured.

I'm not saying my experience is universal. But it has a lot more to do with reality than anything you'll find in the Sutherland Institute's latest diatribe .  As crazy as this might sound to them, helping Utah families helps encourage Utahns to have families.