DN Editorial: Health care in Pa.: It's good to be Corbett or a legislator

GOV. CORBETT can't have been feeling too well after learning that a Commonwealth Court judge found that his actions in diverting money from tobacco-settlement-funded adultBasic and Medicaid programs was unconstitutional. But he doesn't have to worry about getting too ill, since he shares a very generous health-care package with his colleagues in Harrisburg.

Meanwhile, the programs that Corbett wrongly gutted in 2011 include a plan that allowed uninsured workers who make too much to qualify for Medicaid to enroll in a low-cost program. This was funded in part by a massive 1998 tobacco settlement, and from contributions from Blue Cross. By 2010, 400,000 people were on the waiting list for adultBasic, with more than 40,000 participants.

In 2011, Corbett scrapped the program when Blue Cross dropped out, and diverted $220 million of tobacco money to business-development programs.

This week, Commonwealth Court President Judge Dan Pellegrini found that move unconstitutional, since 30 percent of the tobacco money is supposed to be applied to health care. (The original tobacco settlement, part of a multistate lawsuit, was designed to pay future Medicaid health-care costs of smokers.)

It's the second action by former Attorney General Corbett to have been found unconstitutional. Last month, A.G. Kathleen Kane voided Corbett's lottery privatization deal on the same grounds.

Corbett is no friend to those who don't have the kind of health coverage enjoyed by the state's elected officials - let alone to those who have decent but ever-more-expensive health coverage.

Harrisburg lawmakers' gold-plated health coverage is so top-of-the-line, some members get lifetime coverage after retirement, thanks to taxpayer generosity. Until recently, House members contributed nothing to their plan. The executive branch's coverage is slightly less generous, but still wouldn't require anyone, including the governor, to lose a minute of sleep over what might happen if they got sick.

Yet hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians lose plenty of sleep. Just last month, Corbett reaffirmed that he would not be expanding Medicaid coverage, a key piece of the Affordable Care Act that would allow states to expand their enrollment with the feds picking up 100 percent of those costs in the first years, and 90 percent thereafter.

More Republican governors are accepting this expansion, and we hope this court decision gives Corbett an opportunity to rethink his concern for the uninsured.

Health advocates may be celebrating the court's decision, but it may be a symbolic victory only: the money already diverted doesn't necessarily go back to the programs, and the Legislature could amend the law that earmarks a percentage of tobacco money for health care - though given the current state of the economy and of health care, this would be unconscionable. It's not just time for a reality check in Harrisburg; it's time for a morals check.