Imagine: Free Health Care Is Expensive!

Who would have thought it?  Provide free health care and people drop their private coverage.  It seems that politicians are uniformly slow learners.  But after seven months Hawaii has dropped its program providing free health insurance for kids.

Writes Grace-Marie Turner in the New York Post:

HAWAII just had a vivid les son in health-care eco nomics, learning that if you offer people insurance for free – surprise, surprise – they’ll quickly drop other coverage to enroll.

As a result, Hawaii is ending the only state universal child health-care program in the country after just seven months.

The program, called the Keiki (Child) Care Plan, was designed to provide coverage to children whose parents can’t afford private insurance but who make too much to qualify for other public programs (such as Medicaid and Hawaii’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program). Keiki Care was free for these gap kids, except for a $7 office-visit fee.