At last, there’s something we can ALL agree upon: It’s bad public policy to provide Medicaid reimbursement for Viagara and other erectile dysfunction drugs to sex offenders. No one–not Jesse Jackson, not even the A.C.L.U. — objected when Gov. Mark R. Warner signed an emergency regulation blocking the benefit for 52 of Virginia’s registered offenders. The very idea of subsidizing the libido of sex offenders is so ludicrous that only a government bureaucracy acting on auto-pilot or the satirical Web publication The Onion — one of today’s headlines: “Bush Caught in One of His Own Terror Traps“) — could have come up with it.

But there’s a larger question: Why is Medicaid subsidizing erectile dysfunction drugs for anyone?

According to Frank Green’s story in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimate that Medicaid spends about $38 million a year nationally on erectile dysfunction drugs. With about one out of 40 U.S. residents living in the Old Dominion, that would imply about $1 million a year paid here in Virginia.

Medicaid is busting the state budget. Shouldn’t we be husbanding our finite resources for long-term care of the infirm, and for treatment of serious illnesses among the poor rather than for a lifestyle enhancement? Given our parlous fiscal circumstances, paying public dollars to buy Viagara for anyone is a scandal.

Unfortunately, Gov. Warner cannot sign a bill simply payments to the broader Medicaid population. Virginia appears to be bound by a 1998 Medicaid order mandating coverage for the drugs. (I wonder whose lobbyist got that rule inserted?) Perhaps it’s time for Virginia’s congressional delegation to get to work on reversing that order.