OK, so it was far from all of James Sorenson's money. But $1 million drawn from Utah's largest personal fortune, matched with another $1 million from the state's largest health care provider, Intermountain Health Care, will buy a whole year of necessary dental services for 40,000 of the state's neediest people.

It was a good thing that Sorenson, IHC and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. did, raising this money to fill a gap unconscionably left by the Legislature in the state's Medicaid funding. But Wednesday's celebration was an inappropriately jolly affair, made downright distasteful by the extreme chutzpah displayed by House Speaker Greg Curtis and Senate President John Valentine, who had come to share the moment.

(Chutzpah: The ability to murder both of one's own parents and then beg for mercy because one is an orphan.)

It was their Legislature that punted a perfectly good opportunity to use this year's budget surplus to keep the dental care going for another year while the Legislature's own Medicaid task force tries to get a handle on a program faced with skyrocketing costs and declining federal aid. They were willing to leave $4.8 million in federal matching funds on the table, and to pretend that dental problems ignored now don't lead to excruciating, and expensive, health problems later on.

Huntsman, ever the diplomat, apparently saw no percentage in playing the private rescue of a public responsibility as a personal victory over the Legislature. So Wednesday's tableau was all one big happy.

But Huntsman certainly realizes that he has chosen a dangerous, if necessary, path by suggesting that private charity can ever really fill the need for decent medical care - which, by any proper definition, includes dental care - for the increasing number of people who otherwise could not afford it.

The Legislature can still redeem itself by creating a program that provides the most care for the most people at the least cost, without expecting doctors and dentists to either absorb the cost or pass it on to their paying customers, and without whining that it's all the federal government's fault.

No matter whose fault it is, it is the state's responsibility.