Funding kills Curtis clown caper

Just hours before advocates for Utah's poor were about to pronounce the Legislature's health-care reform a circus-size flop — and do it under the big top of the Capitol rotunda with a clown and everything — they decided the show would not go on.

Money has a way of changing people's minds, especially if it's funding to heal a chronic sore spot in state Medicaid coverage — adult dental and vision. The benefits had fallen off the lawmakers' spending priority lists earlier this week, which would mean about 40,000 seniors and disabled Utahns would lose them.

So activists decided a clown, a mascot named "Curtis the Health-care Clown" that directly referenced House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, would be the best way to show the public that the situation was no laughing matter.

Medicaid recipients were ready to throw a pie in his face for blocking an earlier vote by the Executive Appropriations Committee that would have rescued the benefits. The proposed measure would have granted permission to the state Department of Health to try and scrounge up the $2.8 million needed to keep them intact.

Then on Monday, when the numbers weren't in the list of spending priorities compiled by both the House and Senate, the writing was once again on the wall. The only problem was that that writing, and Curtis' motivations, were misinterpreted.

Funding was authorized Wednesday evening by Executive Appropriations, which is made up of legislative leaders from both parties in the House and Senate. That committee has the final say in budget decisions, which meant the reinstatement of the benefits and the cancellation — or at least postponement of — Curtis the Health-care Clown.

So instead of a guy in a big suit barking about how all the talk about health-care reform this session was just a bunch of clowning around, advocates were urging folks to thank lawmakers, especially leadership, that they came through for them, and with the greatest of ease.

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E-mail: jthalman@desnews.com