“People in private insurance die, just as people on government programs or no program” — executive director Wayne Hoffman of Idaho Freedom Foundation (as noted by SR columnist Shawn Vestal), writing why Idaho legislators shouldn’t expand the Medicaid program.

I appreciate Vestal’s description of the Idaho Freedom Foundation (” a bogus charity that claims tax-free status as an educational institution, though its only educational effort seems to be teaching legislators how to vote”) and of Hoffman’s Medicaid stand in today’s column:

Idaho lawmakers do not listen to people like Krell. They listen to people like Wayne Hoffman, the president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. The IFF is a bogus charity that claims tax-free status as an educational institution, though its only educational effort seems to be teaching legislators how to vote.

Hoffman wrote a blog post last week lashing out at those who would draw a connection between Steinke’s death and the Legislature’s decision to keep the Medicaid gap open. He said that doing so was “a lie,” and part of a “desperation narrative,” and pointed out that, hey, get over it, people die .

“People in private insurance die, just as people on government programs or no program,” he wrote.

Lest you think Hoffman is simply ignorant and selfish, he wants you to know that he opposes Medicaid because Medicaid is bad for people’s health. He said that “several studies have found with great consistency that people on government health programs don’t necessarily do better than people on no program at all. … These reports all found, consistently, that patients would have been better off if they weren’t part of the federal government’s Medicaid system.”

The reports find no such thing. They make much more narrow conclusions about health outcomes in populations and find, unsurprisingly, that the Medicaid population is sicker and more troubled than average. Full column here.