Health Care Magnet?

January 26, 2009 | Posted by: Richard M. Esenberg
Category: Federalism, Health Care | 1 Comment


Last January, I published a piece in WI Interest, the journal of the Wisconsin Public Policy Research Institute, arguing that the drafters of Healthy Wisconsin — or any similar program purporting to enact a universal entitlement to health care in a single state — could not constitutionally impose a residency requirement, creating the risk of health care migration and the associated problems of adverse selection. I did not seek to explore whether such migration would occur or who would migrate. I speculated, in fact, that the migrants would not be poor people, but those who are older or high risk.

WPRI has now published a study evaluating the probability of such migration. I have not yet carefully examined it, but I continue to believe that such migration (and the Supreme Court precedent that protects it) is a serious obstacle to state efforts to enact some form of universal health care and, for that matter, a variety of other initiatives that states may undertake in their once honored roles as “laboratories for democracy.”

Cross posted at PrawfsBlawg and Shark and Shepherd.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Jessica E. Slavin on January 26, 2009 1:13 pm

    So, Rick, does this mean that you’ll be favoring a national universal health care system?

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