In praise of Herbert

I think I may have misjudged Governor Herbert. When running into him last week at the grocery store, I wanted to lay into him for his dithering on whether Utah would accept the ACA expansion of Medicaid. This week, however, he is looking like an old-guard Republican and seeming downright reasonable compared to the Republicans in the Utah House. (Photo's from here.)

In her opening remarks of this legislative session on Monday, Becky Lockhart (speaker of the house) laid into Governor Herbert as if he were Obama himself, apparently for the grievous sin of saying that Utah wouldn't outright refuse the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. She said she cannot understand why anyone “would propose to saddle Utah any further with Obamacare, the most costly and catastrophic federal mandate of all” and went on to call the Medicaid expansion an obvious bait and switch (even though the federal government funds 90% of the expansion through 2020). Incomprehensibly, she went on to say that the expansion wouldn't help serve those in need and wouldn't solve any of Utah's serious health care challenges. Hmm, Becky, does bringing health insurance (for the first time) to roughly 58,000 people sound like a minor accomplishment? Picture LaVell Edwards Stadium here, folks.

Thankfully, the Tribune came out against her misinformation campaign in an editorial yesterday. They said she’s attempting to outflank Gov Herbert on the right (“even though she has to take some horridly uninformed and cruel position to do so”) as apparently she’s planning on running against him in 2016.

She’s @beckylockhart, folks, and she’s coming to a town near you.