Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Invading Privacy to "Protect Children"?

By Marc Kilmer

Categories: Maryland, Medicaid

The Annapolis Capital had this intersting headline this week: "Protecting Children Aim of New State Laws." One state law, prohibiting anyone from selling products with unsafe levels of lead (isn't that already illegal?), falls under that category. However, the other state laws discussed in the article concern Medicaid expansion and the government using tax returns to sniff out those who are eligible for Medicaid but don't use it. It seems to me that the expansion of the nanny state and the invasion of taxpayers' privacy can hardly be considered "protecting children." But maybe that's why I'm not in the newspaper business.