Tag Archives | Medicaid

Nullifying ObamaCare: An Alternative To The Supreme Court Ruling

By jim kearney on November 29, 2012 in Big Government, Commentary, Government, Health Care, Law, Nullification

Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare was constitutional.

The Administration takes this as a green light to implement ObamaCare to its fullest extent possible. Because the election went in President Obama’s favor, the Senate and House have lost any desire to overturn the law. Without the overturn, it looks like the law making Obamacare a reality is going to stand forever.

Or is it?

In order to make Obamacare work properly, as it currently stands, there are two mainstays of Obamacare that must be carried out on the state level. Each state must implement an insurance exchange and they must drastically expand Medicare according to the law. These two items of ObamaCare will cost the states untold millions of dollars to implement.

When federal law goes bad, it is up to the states to protect their citizens. The legal theory is called nullification. Nullification is the idea that any given state has the right to invalidate federal laws that they consider unconstitutional. Somewhere along the line the Supreme Court got it wrong in their reasoning. Accordingly, it is like saying that since the government has a stake in GM it can create a law that says we can only buy GM cars. If we buy any other type of car we have to pay an extra tax on it. Continue Reading →

Turning Medicaid Against the Feds: Withdraw!

By Josh Eboch on December 10, 2009 in Health Care, State Sovereignty

As if we needed another example of how poorly conceived the federal health care “reform” plans are, there’s some very interesting food for thought from two senior fellows at the Heritage Foundation. According to them, if the health care legislation passes Congress in anything like its current form, states would be better off ending the voluntary partnership known as Medicaid.

If states did so, “their collective savings would be $725 billion over the 2013-2019 period, but they would exceed $1 trillion over 10 years.”

In Virginia alone, withdrawl from Medicaid would save the state’s budget something on the order of $9 billion over ten years. Even if 90% of current long-term care programs continued to be funded by state dollars.

Which is why in addition to the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act, legislation will be introduced during the 2010 General Assembly session to end Virginia’s participation in Medicaid entirely, should the federal government manage to succeed in its attempted health care take over.

This is huge; especially when coupled with ongoing nullification efforts. It could be just the trump card states need to back the federal government down. At least on this issue.

Consider the budget games being played in Washington, D.C. just to make this piece of garbage legislation look even remotely affordable. The revenue and growth projections are far too rosy, while the proposed spending cuts will never materialize.

Cato’s Michael Cannon has already shown that the true cost of ObamaCare is really more like $6 trillion over the first ten years.

Add to that an additional $1 trillion if the states reject yet another unfunded federal mandate, and somehow I don’t see our nation’s AAA credit rating hanging around very much longer.

Which makes me wonder something else.

Wasn’t there another voluntary compact in our history involving the federal government and the states?

A voluntary compact that a certain president claimed was not voluntary when several states chose to end it; resulting in the deaths of 600,000 Americans over federal tax revenues?

Oh yeah, that’s right. It was the Constitution.

Another Reason to Nullify ObamaCare

By Josh Eboch on October 9, 2009 in Health Care, Nullification

From the Wall Street Journal:

A central feature of the Baucus bill is the vast expansion of state Medicaid programs. This is necessary, we are told, to cover more of the nation’s uninsured. The provision has angered governors, since the federal government will cover only part of the expansion and stick fiscally strapped states with an additional $37 billion in costs.

Could someone show me the clause in the Constitution that includes unfunded mandates as part of Congress’ enumerated powers?

The day after Obama rams this debacle of a plan through Congress, every statehouse in the country should be packed with citizens demanding to know how their state and local legislators intend to stop the federal government from robbing state and local taxpayers blind.

Medicaid is already an enormous drain on state balance sheets. Coupled with ridiculously generous public sector benefits and pension plans, those costs account for more than the entire budget shortfall in many states.

To sit idly by while the federal government drops yet another unsustainable fiscal burden in the laps of the sovereign states is not an option. Neither is hoping for a better Congress in 2010. The national Republicans will never be a viable alternative until they begin advocating for true federalism.

We need a return to the federalism of our founding and we need it yesterday.

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Tag Archives | Medicaid