Berger’s Medicaid 180 earns him drive-by praise
In my book, it’s rarely a good thing when politicians try to take
both sides of an issue. The drive-by media loves it however, when the 180 causes the pol to finally see things THEIR WAY:
Phil Berger, who spent years as one of North Carolina’s most ardent opponents of Medicaid expansion, is now one of the program’s most powerful advocates on the right.[…]
The hospital and health care lobbies’ PAC checks are getting bigger and better (and ARE NOT BOUNCING!)
Lots of cash is a great way to change an amoral politician’s mind.
MORE:
[…] The change of heart from Berger, the leader of the state’s Republican-controlled Senate, is driving North Carolina to join the 39 states and Washington, D.C., that take federal money – made available during the Obama administration – to extend health insurance benefits under the state program to more people with low incomes.
“If there’s somebody who’s spoken against expansion more than I, more publicly than I, I just don’t know who that would be,” Berger, the Senate president pro tempore, said in an interview.[…]
How is this good? It flies in the face of the GOP’s platform planks on fiscal responsibility. Even Pat McCrory saw Medicaid was a fraud-riddled mess and said we needed
to wait until it got reasonably cleaned up. For what it’s worth, it’s not even close.
Medicaid expansion will mostly be used to pay for this tsunami of illegals pouring into our country and state. DC is already broke. So, most of it will fall on state taxpayers. We’ll see a much bigger tax burden. Thanks to Phil and his sidekick Timmy, we will no longer have the high moral ground on fiscal restraint and responsibility.
MORE:
[…] Opposition to the program was for years a hallmark of the conservative movement. But more than 10 years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, red states are increasingly warming to Medicaid expansion, thanks to its popularity with voters and successes in the states that have done it.[…]
Who doesn’t looooooooove “free money”? It loses its appeal, however, when the bigger tax bills get sent out. Why not some responsible reforms to control and / or reduce health care costs?
MORE:
[…] South Dakota was the most recent state to make the shift after voters approved expansion through a ballot measure in November.
The federal government helped drive the recent momentum through an emergency measure during the COVID pandemic that temporarily added millions of people to Medicaid rolls and new incentives for states to extend postpartum Medicaid enrollment to 12 months from the standard two.
That emergency measure is set to expire in April. Increasing the stakes is the wave of rural hospital bankruptcies, an issue that is expected to worsen this year, particularly in the 11 states that have not expanded Medicaid.[…]
Phil Berger has turned in nothing more than a prostitute for the special interests. How many times has he spit in the eye of Republican voters to turn a trick for the special interests? He did it on boys in the girls bathroom / locker room with his flip flop to repeal HB2. That pleased the LGBTQ/STD crowd and the “woke” companies that back them but royally pissed off the Christian voters who are part of the NCGOP base. He did it on backing the radical NC Green New Deal, HB951 that panders to “Woke” Duke Energy and the wind and solar grifters, and screws the average citizen electric ratepayer to the wall. Now he is backing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion that polls show the Republican base does not want. Phil Berger is once again trying to prove that he is the best politician that money can buy. He is such a whore to the special interests, Berger ought to put a red light above his office door. So should his partner in political prostitution, Tim Moore.
Where are the principled Republican senators willing to Just Say NO to Phil Berger’s corrupt sellouts of Republican principles to the special interests? Too many of them are like Sen. Jim Perry (RINO-Kinston), spear carriers for the special interests themselves. That is a really sad state of affairs for the NCGOP. We have far too many in the General Assembly who are a mini-Tillis. They would not know a principle if one jumped up and bit them.
Sadly, I couldn’t agree with you more. The House leadership is no better.
What i$ it that make$ anyone favor legi$lation that favor$ China?