From another MSNBC article linked from that piece:


So, the state health agency will be tasked with reviewing paperwork to enforce these sanctions, and doctors will waste time dealing with more red tape, all in the name of collecting a chump-change fee that will do very little to defray the costs of Medicaid. Boy, for "conservative" leaders, they do sure loves them some big government healthcare bureaucracy when it means they can punish the less fortunate!

These laws are written by people to whom the very existence of a social safety net is anathema. They don't really want to make the safety net more "fair" by punishing people who make bad choices, they just want to reinforce the meme that anyone on the public dole is a lazy freeloader. So I agree with the author of the piece that this is a misguided effort that will not help actually slim down the obese or rid tobacco users of their addiction.

This has nothing to do with making people healthier, it's about trying to eliminate Medicaid altogether. Same playbook the pro-life forced-pregnancy movement has used for decades now.