Programming Note: Clark Havighurst at the Locke
Foundation today explained how health insurance enshrines monopoly power. See the video
here

The North Carolina House completed passage of Health Care
Protection Act (H2) last Tuesday and waited for Gov. Bev Perdue’s non-signature
to make the bill law. Then along came Attorney General Roy Cooper claiming the
bill is unconstitutional and unenforceable because it contradicts ObamaCare,
the constitutionality of which is itself in question. Cooper glosses over that
by presuming the federal law to be constitutional until the Supreme Court says
it isn’t. He also claimed that the bill would cost North Carolina federal money
for Medicaid because if ObamaCare ultimately is constitutional, the state would
not be able to charge hospitals an anti-fraud fee.

But the AG Cooper has long been predisposed against North
Carolinians and in favor of the federal government’s health care overhaul. When
pressed, in April 2010, to join the Florida suit that now has a majority of
states as plaintiffs, Cooper said North Carolina would be able to free ride on
the efforts of others as the law would be unconstitutional the same as in the
states that sued. But if one were to read Judge Roger Vinson’s declaratory
judgment as narrowly as Cooper takes the states’ freedom to challenge bad
federal laws, then North Carolina is wasting money implementing a bill from
which the plaintiff states are protected.

The General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division provided
three fiscal notes on the bill and not one mentioned Medicaid. The fiscal notes
called "excessive" the Attorney General’s estimate that it would take
up to "8 million hours of attorney staff time" to represent North
Carolinians against the IRS as a result of H2.

John Locke Foundation legal expert Daren Bakst dissected
these arguments on the Locker Room
blog and found them wanting.

Attorney General Cooper clearly believes that Congress has
unlimited powers until the Supreme Court says otherwise. And he thinks North
Carolina should not even ask the question.