Cutting Off Your Nose....

The mother of your Indianapolis Observer used to warn: "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face."

It's the first thing that comes to mind when contemplating Gov. Mike Pence's ill-advised opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

As J. K. Wall reports in this week's Indianapolis Business Journal, "[E]ven conservative opponents of Obamacare said Pence's policy is problematic both economically and politically.... Even conservative health economists found Indiana's attempts to block Obamacare's tax subsidies puzzling."

It defies logic that the governor wants to keep 182,000 needy Hoosiers from enrolling in Medicaid, and disqualify, according to Wall, "an estimated 265,000 Hoosiers who would otherwise receive tax credits." But, there you have it.

In case your mother wasn't as descriptive as mine, that saying (which dates to the 12th century) describes a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a problem. As Devon Herrick, a health economist at the National Center for Policy Analysis, warns in the IBJ report, Gov. Pence is actively promoting "a strategy for getting defeated".