JLF head John Hood has a column out today on North Carolina’s rejection on a Medicaid expansion. A highlight:
As the costly implementation of the perversely named Affordable Care Act continues to baffle, disappoint, and enrage the public, a collection of government vendors and left-wing groups has settled on a brilliant political strategy: castigate North Carolina for failing to do enough to implement the Affordable Care Act.
Among other things, they say Gov. Pat McCrory and the legislature should have accepted Obamacare’s offer to expand Medicaid to all poor and near-poor individuals. Hospitals say it because, after all, they’d get most of the money. Liberals say it because, after all, their ultimate goal is Medicare/Medicaid for all, not the preservation of private, competitive markets for health care finance and delivery.
North Carolina’s leaders have said no. That’s because they can see beyond the ends of their noses — and beyond the flimsy promises of the used-car salesmen in Washington who are trying to pass Obamacare off as something other than the lemon it is.
You can read the rest of John’s column here.
