This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

So. Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes is worried that the state's forward-thinking Justice Reinvestment Initiative might not succeed because there aren't enough provisions — i.e. enough money — to meet the needs of non-violent offenders who are being steered away from state prison and back into their communities.

Ya' think?

Hughes may be the person most responsible for the Utah's stubborn, mathematically challenged and horribly cruel refusal to accept any real form of Medicaid expansion. Not as offered by the federal Affordable Care Act and not as transmogrified into Gov. Gary Herbert's Healthy Utah plan.

Thus was it an astounding level of arrogance, even for him, that allowed Hughes to turn around and worry, as he did in a legislative briefing the other day, that the state's plan to reduce its prison population might fail because nobody is giving enough help to the local governments that are faced with helping the no-longer-incarcerated drug offenders and mentally ill make their way in the world.

The speaker has a point. But understand this:

Anyone who claims to want to reduce the strain on the state's correctional system, as Hughes and other legislative leaders say they do, or who claims to be concerned about the rising number of homeless people on the streets of Salt Lake City, as Hughes says he is, and still stands against the expansion of Medicaid in one serious form or another is either self-deluded or out to fool the whole of the Utah population.

The ticky-tacky plan passed by the Legislature last year to try to get the federal government to offer federal Medicaid funding to a sliver of the state's poorest and least self-sufficient is basically a fraud. Even the argument that the ACA, also known as Obamacare, might follow its namesake president out the door is no excuse.

Yes, President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-dominated Congress have pledged to repeal and replace, or maybe just repeal, Obamacare. But they haven't done it yet. And they are likely to find that unwinding a system that has already extended health care access to millions of Americans who otherwise would not have it will be much more difficult, politically and fiscally, than they have allowed themselves to believe.

Utah clearly should have, and still should, take maximum advantage of expanded Medicaid funding because it is the largest, most immediate source of funding for so many of the most pressing issues facing Utah, specifically homelessness, drug addiction and lack of access to medical care.

If and when Obamacare becomes Trumpcare, or Ryancare, or even Hughescare, we can shift everything over to that system.

Until then, refusing to participate continues to be foolish, irresponsible and cruel.