Indiana Gov. Wants 29 Times More Funding For Bureaucracy That Brutalized Public Health

Indiana’s term-limited governor, highly unpopular with his GOP base, is pushing an overfunded public health plan that could steal local control from county officials. It’s yet another state-level example of Republican politicians selling out their own voters to bloated and harmful special interests.

The lame-duck governor and several top Republicans in the Republican-controlled legislature are clearly angling to get hired by Big Pharma after leaving public office, thereby using this sweetheart deal to eventually line their own pockets from one of the state’s largest Lobbying for interests

Gov. issues authoritarian orders. Eric Holcomb, and Kris Box, the health commissioner, were both booed at Holcomb’s own party convention in June. These destructive mandates have masked children, hampered the economy, stunted learning, and destroyed mental health. Holcomb wants to expand the power of the inept state health bureaucracy by a costly plan to consolidate more power at state level. In return for large sums of cash, the package will encourage county health departments and other local authorities to surrender control.

The governor wants the state legislature to give him 29 times the amount they currently provide for the state’s 95 health departments, from $6.9 million per year to $200 million per year. This financial request alone explains why Holcomb isn’t popular with the base voters. He won re-election in a landslide with hundreds of thousands Democrat votes. It is part of a huge spending plan that even state Democrats could support. 

To come up with his budget, Holcomb used a crude formula. He calculated how much Indiana spent on public health compared to other states, and brought it up to the national average. Holcomb claims, without evidence and in the face of long experience showing government intervention makes things worse, that more government spending will reduce obesity, lower smoking rates, and improve mental health — all areas where his state ranks poorly.

Yet it is unlikely that a giant government model will alleviate complex health problems that doctors already aren’t solving with one-on-one care. It is also not credible that public health caused so much damage to mental well-being through its Covid policies.

Holcomb is not going to just give the extra money to the counties in a flexible form. The Governor’s Public Health Commission touts a comprehensive plan that must be signed onto in its entirety. It contains 80-20 match rules for fund matching (where the bulk of the state’s funding is provided); 10 additional statutory obligations; new data requirements; as well as obedience to state guidance regarding controversial issues. 

Luke Kenley, one of the commission’s co-chairs, said county commissioners who vote to join the program will be turning over their elected responsibilities to state officials.

“We’ve had these debates, discussions, arguments and fights back and fOrth about, ‘Well the governor shouldn’t do a mask mandate,’ Or ‘The governor is telling us to do this or to do that or something else,’ or ‘What about vaccinations?’ or ‘What about decisions by local officials?’ We’re