Dear Editor:

Not surprisingly, Rep. Bruce MacDonald's column (2/13) is full of half-truths and misrepresentations.

The most blatant is the following: “Statistics show that when people have health insurance, they keep themselves in better health, use emergency rooms less and have better health outcomes.” The fact is that we have a perfect real-world example of what happens when a program like Rep. MacDonald supports is put in place. The state of Oregon expanded their Medicaid program in 2008 to some 10,000 low-income residents selected by lottery from 90,000 applicants. The study compared these 10,000 to 15,000 other lottery participants and found that those individuals now on Medicaid “visited ERs 40 percent more often than those without insurance.” Katherine Baicker, Harvard School of Public Health economist said “the data from all their research to date suggests that extending Medicaid to the uninsured increases healthcare costs between 25 percent and 35 percent per person.” (Wall Street Journal, 1/3/14)

Further, no money will be “injected into the economy” because money coming from the government first has to be taken from someone else. This is simply redistribution, not creation of wealth. To say the money is being added to the economy is the same as thinking that a tax refund is a bonus or gift or “found money.” But rather than the money being forcibly taken from you and then generously returned to you, in this case, it is being taken from your friends, neighbors, family, children and grandchildren.

At the end of the day this is about government seeking to control more and more of our lives not freeing us to improve them.

Bill Hunt
Bath