Joint Legislative Committee on — SAY WHAT ???????
Speaker Timmy this week announced his appointees to “The Joint Committee on Access to Health Care and Expanding Medicaid.” You know, it’s amazing how much of their agenda Democrats have been able to accomplish with a GOP majority in both legislative chambers.
Just reading that committee name makes you realize how massively expansive and expensive the committee’s end-product will be. This committee’s very existence is just one of the last few 2010-2012 promises to voters Jones Street Republicans had not yet broken.
The hospital lobby has really gotten their money’s worth here. They’ve even managed to get a retired hospital executive in as the committee chairman.
For a while, then-Gov. Pat McCrory stood firmly into opposition to a move like this. Medicaid was too infested with waste, fraud, and abuse to move forward right now with an expansion. By the end of his first and only term, McCrory was interested in Medicaid expansion. So, was everything fixed? Folks with half-a-brain and minimal eyesight report that it has not.
Jones St. GOPers were talking as early as April 2021 about making this move.
Honest people who know anything about Medicaid will tell you North Carolina already has some of the nation’s most generous benefits. Health care providers in North Carolina will tell you of providers in adjacent states sending their sick and unable to pay folks to North Carolina because the Tar Heel State has more money and benefits for the patients.
The whole “access to health care” is a liberal lie. Doctors cannot refuse to treat an ill person over his ability to pay. That’s a lot of the business that urgent care clinics and emergency rooms get.
(FYI– The word “joint” in the committee name indicates Phil & the boys are eager as well to sell out their constituents. In political talk, “joint” = House + Senate.)
The postponement of filing for office may have a silver lining for those of us mad as hell at the liars in Raleigh. EVERY ONE of those (R) weasels needs a strong primary that leads to a defeat. If the weasel incumbents make it to the general election, we will be stuck with choosing the liberal we can tolerate most. (Kinda like in ThomT’s races.).
The real cleanup needs to happen in the primary. The way Timmy is leading the House, you can’t even tell there are even any Republican members. The House-cleaning needs to start NOW. If we knock out a couple of ‘big dogs’ in the primaries, perhaps we can scare these film-flammers straight.
Note the change in the name of the committee, which until now has been known as the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Medicaid and NC Health Choice. Lambeth was co-chairman in that incarnation as well. The new appointees seem to have only one token conservative so that the Dems and the RINOs will dominate. Instead of looking at Medicaid, they now will just look at Medicaid expansion. They ought to be looking at Medicaid fraud, with a Cooper political appointee just indicted for $43 million in Medicaid fraud. Of course with more Medicaid money flowing, there will be even more opportunities for fraud.
On the Senate side, the co-chairman has been ultra-RINO Sen. Jim Perry (RINO-Kinston), who is bought and paid for by the Big Medicine special interests. Look at his campaign contributor list if you have any doubts on that. Perry has been the spear carrier for the big hospitals since he has been in the legislature. This fall, he broadened his attempts to push Medicaid expansion by also trying to coax House members over to that position. One rather humorous incident was when Perry approached the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Keith Kidwell and asked Kidwell what he would take to change his vote to supporting Medicaid expansion and Kidwell replied he would give him the same answer he had given when Tim Moore asked the same question, “Roy Cooper’s resignation as governor”. Somehow, I do not think Cooper would go THAT far to get his pet project approved.
In the last legislative session, it was known that Berger had the votes in the Senate for Medicaid expansion, but there were enough GOP House members resisting it that it did not go to the floor.
Many of the RINOs who are pushing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion are the very same ones who pushed through Alexandria Ocassio- Cortez’ Green New Deal, HB 951 in the last session. Jim Perry was active in that too, and if you look at his contributor list, you can see whose payola he was representing. Perry is one of the RINOs who really needs a primary challenge. Bought and paid for special interest hacks are NOT what the GOP needs in the legislature. Perry is a very wealthy man and could self finance his own campaigns easily without having to sell his soul to the special interests, but for some reason he prefers to be a rent boy for the special interests.
There are way too many Jim Perry’s in the ranks in both the House and Senate. We need some conservative primary challengers to stand up for the taxpayers and the GOP base.
Jim Perry is probably the worst RINO Republican in the legislature. He is a big-spending liberal at heart. He has no conservative convictions and personifies the worst of GOP politics.