LET UTAH DECIDE FOR ITSELF

by Paul Gibbs

People have been asking me why a Florida-based outside group like the Foundation For Government Accountability would bother getting involved in the Health Utah discussion. How does it effect them? The simple answer is it doesn't. Sure, they're claiming they have a stake in this because Florida is paying ACA taxes, but if extremist groups like the FGA hadn't stalled Medicaid expansion in Florida, they'd be getting their tax money back for their own expansion. The fact that their state is throwing money away does not give them a stake in how Utah spends its tax payer money. That's a patently absurd argument.

The truth is, Utah isn't unique. The FGA has run ads attacking Medicaid expansion efforts in Indiana, Arkansas, Maine, and other states, using the same erroneous  points, stock photos and scare tactics. They haven't bothered to learn a single detail about Healthy Utah, or how it differs from traditional Medicaid expansion. And I don't think they care. The people of Utah matter so little to them that they keep ignoring my challenge that they meet with people in Utah's coverage gap and see how it effects them. And now they want Governor Herbert, who has important work to gaining the support of the legislature, to waste time debating them? We don't need to convince them, because this has nothing to do with them. Seriously, are we so short on stubborn, misinformed extremists in Utah that we need to bring some in from out of state? I'm here to tell you that is definitely not the case.

If our legislature wants to be true to their own stated goal of staying true to Utah values instead of letting outsiders tell us what to do, they need to ignore the FGA and listen to the people of Utah instead.



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