The United States is one big happy country — but a public college in one state can charge students from another state a high out-of-state tuition rate.
Domestic travelers may have trouble getting hunting and fish licenses outside their home states.
Other countries have imposed famous limits on internal migration, especially by poor people. When Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations, the bible of capitalism, one of the villains in the book was an 18th century system that required poor people in England to stay in their home parish.
A team recently looked at the relationship between interstate migration and public long-term care (LTC) in a report prepared for the executive office on aging at the Hawaii Department of Health.
The team looked at interstate migration in connection with an analysis of the feasibility of setting up a limited-benefit long-term care (LTC) benefits program. Hawaii has been considering the idea of setting up its own public LTC program since at least 2012.
A lawmaker in California recently introduced a bill that calls for his state to conduct a similar public LTC program feasibility study.
The analysts described the pros and cons involved with setting up a public LTC program, and they also talked about an issue that faced major medical insurance regulators before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) commercial health insurance market requirements took effect: The difficulty of offering either richer benefits or lower costs than other states.
Concerns about the effects of migration across state lines could help shield insurers in the market for setting up their own public long-term care insurance (LTCI) programs.
For some of the details about what the analysts said about LTC-related moves from state to state, read on.
1. The Constitution limits state efforts to shut newcomers out.
“The privileges and immunities clause of Article IV of the Constitution states: ‘The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states,’” the analysts in Hawaii note.
In an 1868 case, Paul vs. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the provision relieves citizens moving from one state to another “from the disabilities of alienage in other states.”
See also: 12 worst pieces of tax advice from financial planners