Alaska, Medicaid, and human capital

Okay, last healthcare-related post for a while.  Promise.  Cross my heart and wish to eat some more goat curry.

Never mind that I really do wish to eat some more goat curry.  That shit was awesome.

In my previous post, I ranted about the free-rider problem in healthcare and how it isn't right for us to make free-riding illegal without making it possible for the poor to not be free riders.  But, of course, I'm a crass, cynical Political Scientist, and I don't really care about what's "right" and "wrong".  That's why I'm in Uganda, living off the sweat of the peasantry, eating chapatti rolex and drinking coffee and Mountain Dew and rolled up pancakes for breakfast and screaming at the wait staff every time they serve me English tea rather than English coffee.

Actually, mostly I'm the one doing the sweating (although I do sort of chuckle to myself when the Ugandans start bundling up any time the temperature dips below 78).  And I don't do much screaming, though I occasionally do reduce my exorbitant American-style tip when it takes them like an hour and a half to get me two pancakes (Seriously, Uganda, if you don't have any flour in the kitchen, just tell me and I'll order something else. Crikey)

There's basically one reason why I really care about the medicaid thing, and it's this:

Alaska has oil now, but once the oil runs out, our only hope, economically, is to develop some high-value added industries, or attract existing ones to the state.  Generally the way you do that is by having a well-educated, healthy population.  Economists call it developing your "human capital".  We need policies that do that.  And it's hard to imagine that providing health insurance to the poor won't make them healthier.  That will be one step that will put us on the road to surviving the collapse of the Alaskan oil industry.

For the record, other important steps would include doing things that improve our public education system, including greater investments in research and teaching in the UA system, and fixing our primary and secondary education systems.  Although I'll make a lot of people mad when I get into what I think we should do to fix K-12.  So I'll save that for another time.  But here's a hint: think hot dogs with avocado.