Wednesday marks one year
since President Barack Obama signed the still-unpopular health care law. It has
also been one year since the first constitutional challenges to the law were
filed in court.
North Carolina never joined a suit and Gov. Perdue earlier this year vetoed a
bill that would have protected health care freedom for North Carolinians,
though the House can come back at any time to override this veto.
Implementation has already cost businesses in North Carolina their insurance
coverage, increased premiums for others, and force more people who now have
insurance in the individual market to lose their coverage in 2014. Official
estimates are that 560,000 people who are now uninsured will end up on Medicaid
by 2019, or more than half of those who get coverage under ObamaCare. More than
150,000 of those people already qualify for Medicaid, but have not signed up.
The conservative cost estimate of covering all these people is $830 million in
state money between SFY 2014 and SFY 2019. A more likely scenario for state
spending would add another $600 million or more to that figure.
Tomorrow, the House Health and Human Services Committee will continue debating
a bill to create an ObamaCare health insurance exchange. Any legislation,
however, is being crafted in the dark. The federal government has not written
rules to govern such exchanges. Georgia
Gov. Nathan Deal dropped plans for an exchange in that state.
Another option for states is to create an interstate agreement on health
insurance sales. North Carolina already participates in similar agreements for life insurance and sales taxes.
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