Back in 2013, when Republicans were itching to show how much they hated Obamacare, the legislature passed Senate Bill 4. The bill is known mainly for stopping the expansion of Medicaid, costing the state millions of dollars in needed funds and denying insurance to about 500,000 people. But it also prevented any “department, agency or institution” from setting up a state-based exchange. Senate Bill 4 was designed as a snub to the Affordable Care Act and to poke a stick in the eye of those freeloaders with the audacity to think they deserved health care if they couldn’t afford it.
In the years since, more than 500,000 North Carolinians have received health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Almost all receive subsidies. That could soon change.
The Supreme Court could rule as soon as today that the subsidies for people using the federal exchange, everybody in North Carolina, are unconstitutional. The case is being decided about the language of the bill more than the substance, but that won’t matter to people if they lose their subsidies. And they can blame the GOP who have tried to sabotage the legislation since its inception.
Commissioner of Insurance Wayne Goodwin points out that the ruling could have implications beyond just people using Obamacare. The law would still be intact, requiring people to purchase insurance and fining them if they did not. Without the subsidies, many people would be unable to afford it, leaving them uninsured and back in the emergency room for their primary care. It could also cause insurance rates to rise for everybody to pick up the cost.
Back in 2012, Goodwin and his Department were working with the federal government–and the McCrory transition team–to set up a state exchange. Had the legislature let them continue with their work, North Carolina wouldn’t be affected by the court’s impending ruling. Now, we’re waiting to see if our insurance system is thrown into chaos or not. If it is, you can blame the Republicans.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
The Southern States of the C.S.A. like NC now, charge to poor to work for slave wages and hope they die in car crashes.
The Repugs, bless their dark little hearts.
Probably meant well in their own Fauxx news, minds when they decided to follow the enlightened path of Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Scorched Earth policy. You know it is so close in line with their own Family Values ” If we can’t own it , then destroy it’
Everyone knows that their behavior is no more no less that industrial protectionism.This is also known as crony capitalism.at it finest. you know that they all have investments in the medical insurance industry
Ah, but the partisan and callous NCGOP will blame Obama, the ACA, the Dems, those Americans who enrolled in ACA, and everything and everyone imaginable EXCEPT themselves for the disruption and fallout that ensues.
And they’ll continue to call ACA a “failure” despite its record of extending healthcare to some 20 million more Americans, despite its helping to lower the rate of heathcare cost increases for the first time in decades, and despite the millions of human stories of how ACA has helped individuals, workers, and families.
And they’ll have no alternative affordable healthcare insurance plan or legislation ready to enact that will ease the impact of losing subsidies or that would grease the transition to some other affordable healthcare program. And that will just prove, once again, that the GOP is only about saying “no” to a better America —especially saying “no” to programs/policies that might benefit those less well off and less fortunate than themselves and their moneyed handlers.
So, assuming the SCOTUS rules the law is unconstitutional, it is the fault of the plantiffs in the suits. That makes perfect sense, never mind the complete secrecy the bill was passed in and the fact that health care has gone up even more for most people since it went into effect.
The only way ACA has “extended” healthcare to only 6 million people is through giving them other people’s money. And by that I mean the money that was borrowed for every single penny of the “subsidies”. Your children and grandchildren will be paying for this ponzi scheme for decades to come…and probably cursing the stupidity of implementing this thing too.
“Complete secrecy” — even I found the legislation in both the House and Senate on line, as it always is. And unlike you, I bothered to read it. Shocking, I know, but it was readable by anyone willing to put some effort into it. No, I don’t like all of if, and I do not think everything in it is a good, but I see it as a step toward a better system.
Heaven help everyone if the Court rules the subsidies are invalid. Such a ruling will not lower prices for anyone and millions of people will return to their uninsured status, which helps nobody.
Could the GOP do better? Since the House at least spends all its efforts simply passing votes to repeal the ACA and has NEVER produced a coherent rational piece of legislation to replace it, I do not think so.
But of course, trillions of dollars spent on wars for oil on the credit card over the past 25 years will have no negative effect at all on our children and grandchildren!
Rational Observer: You can keep on swallowing the claptrap and spewing it out in anti-ACA tirades. But it doesn’t make it true.
ACA wasn’t passed in “secrecy”.
Healthcare rates haven’t significantly increased for those enrolled nor for those not enrolled. My rates on insurance provided through my employer haven’t had any significant jump since 2013, nor have the premiums of everyone I know.
ACA is not funded on bonds or by borrowing or by going into debt. It is paid for with premiums, excise taxes, penalty payments, and other taxes. There’s no “paying it forward” or going into debt to run the program. The 2015 projected cost of operating ACA for the next 10 years has actually declined by $150B from its 2014 projection.
In 2015, due in part to the ACA, health care spending grew at the slowest rate on record (since 1960). Meanwhile, health care price inflation is at its lowest rate in 50 years.
And unless you believe that the government’s collection of revenues and then allocation of those monies to public programs (like social security, highways, Pell grants, or defense) is somehow illegal and a misappropriation of public dollars, no one is getting “other people’s money.” It’s the UNITED STATES, not the Republican States, not the Liberal States, not the Southern States, and not the “Have and Have-not” States.
Not cloaked in secrecy prior to it’s passage? We were told that we had to pass the bill to find out what was in it, according to Nancy Pelosi.
Yeah, TY, keeping miscontrueing and taking comments out of context.Watch FOX news much?
You need to examine that a little more. Those who are insured under the ACA Pay their way, They may get a subsidy which has saved my daughters life they pay in the end in taxes. They pay their fair share as to what they can afford. Most people who complain about this health care bill have never tried it or looked into it. Forget Obama and start thinking about this country.
.It has saved us all money and given much more in Hospital write offs and also helped Medicare. It is profitable.