Governor Ritter holds children hostage to gain government market share

A March 5 article in Face the State quoted me in Medicaid expansion:

According to Brian Schwartz, a healthcare policy expert who testified before the 208 Commission, Ritter’s plan to increase enrollment in state sponsored insurance programs is only going to grow government unnecessarily and hurt Coloradans in the long run. “The children’s health plan is like the kiddie version of Medicaid,” said Schwartz. “Instead of passing more laws that unfairly compete with private companies and put people on crappy plans, why doesn’t the government look at what it is already doing make insurance so expensive?”

As I’ve written before, Medicaid is a horrible program that keeps the people is “aids” in a state of depending on government for lousy medical care. This blog post by Cato’s Michael Cannon (& challenge to Paul “everyone who disagrees with me has evil intentions” Krugman) includes several references on why SCHIP (Medicaid for kids) is a bad program.  Cannon has also written about it in the USA Today and a longer briefing paper. A good moral case against SCHIP is here.