Arizona Health Program in Jeopardy

(Phoenix, Arizona) The state-run Arizona Healthcare Group subsidizes the health care costs of tens of thousands of people with large infusions of taxpayer funds despite its intended goal of being self-sustaining on premium payments.

The program insures everyone for similar costs regardless of any pre-existing conditions. As a result, the number of seriously sick people signing up far outnumber the healthy people and costs have soared. Jeez, imagine that.

From AZCentral:

"I think the intention was noble," said Rep. Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, who co-chairs a legislative committee investigating problems with the program. Adams wants to scrap Healthcare Group in favor of a program for the state's sickest, uninsurable residents. "What they were trying to accomplish was correct, but it failed."

Interestingly, the comment thread accompanying the article largely blames anchor babies and the Iraq war for the failure of the government-run health care program. Obviously, the commenters have issues.

However, the reason the Healthcare Group is failing to achieve its goal is simple. In every socialized medical scheme where the government promises to give everything to everybody, sooner or later it's realized that the government has only a finite capacity to give whereas the capacity to want is infinite.

So, the government depletes its resources to give while the people continue to want and the net result is rationing, typically by extraordinary waiting times or the blanket denial of selected health services. In the case of Arizona, it appears that the Healthcare Group scheme is to be scrapped for a new and improved scheme.