Times of Northwest Indiana
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was in Gary last week to expound on his plan to use a cigarette tax increase to pay for a new program for uninsured Hoosiers.
It's a start.
Depending on who you listen to, Indiana has as many as 872,000 Hoosiers without health insurance. But for the purposes of this new program, pinning down that number isn't essential.
That's because rather than set up a new entitlement, this plan calls for enrolling only as many people as the state can afford to help.
Mitch Roob, who heads the state Family and Social Services Administration, explained the program in detail.
A 25-cent increase in the cigarette tax could support assistance for 120,000 uninsured Hoosiers; a 50-cent increase would extend coverage to 200,000.
The plan would apply to uninsured Hoosiers with a family income no more than 200 percent of the poverty level -- $40,000 for a family of four, for example.
To encourage the participants to be responsible patients, they would be required to put up to 5 percent of their income into a $1,100 health care spending account, with the state paying the balance of that amount.
An incentive for patients is that money left in that account at the end of the year is theirs to keep.
But there's a catch -- they must get the appropriate preventative care in order to get that money.
Go ahead with the 50-cent increase on cigarettes to help an estimated 200,000 Hoosiers without health insurance.
But let's be honest. As good as this plan sounds, it's merely salve for the problem, not a solution. Daniels admits as much.
The federal government needs to tackle this one. In the meantime, though, it is good that the states are trying stopgap measures.