Pass it, THEN figure out how to pay for it and launch it. A really bad bipartisan habit Raleigh needs to break.
Silly me. I thought representative government was all about our elected folks getting together to publicly make decisions for the greater good. Too many big decisions in our capital city — from current times back to the Black-Basnight era and beyond — are made by a handful of folks in a smoke-filled backroom. *Those not honored to be part of that esteemed “handful” are expected to wait patiently on (1) a finished product to emerge from said smoke-filled room and (2) instructions from party leaders on how to vote. *
The latest examples come from last year’s drawn-out budget drama and the much-celebrated expansion of Medicaid.
The debate, if you want to call it that, on Medicaid expansion featured a lot of elected folks on Jones Street who had been forever bashing welfare and big government in general doing some amazing 180s to suddenly support the expansion of the notoriously fraud-ridden federal / state health care program.
Upon passage, we had Speaker Timmy and Uncle Phil holding hands and singing kumbaya with our ridiculous governor. *The world, we were told, had officially been SAVED. *
Fast forward to now. We’ve been finding a curious number of county governments now struggling with covering the costs of an expanded Medicaid program. (We specifically targeted the situation in Mecklenburg.)
We were curious to see how many other counties were finding themselves stuck with surprise bills. We spoke with a senior county government source in our neck of the woods who told us his county had not yet been hit with any nasty Medicaid surprises:
“We were told to go ahead and get set up like the money is coming. Hire who you need to hire. The money you need will be coming, Raleigh told us. We called the bluff. Like the guy in ‘Jerry McGuire,’ we said “Show me the money.” Then, we’d talk about whether to add resources. We sat tight, and thank goodness we did. We’re not experiencing the money issues that some of these other counties, who believed the original spin from Raleigh, are.”
The honorables on Jones Street tried to pass all kinds of crazy things in last year’s budget bill — casinos, weed, and the like. One thing that really slid under the radar and ended up in the final document was the creation of a state-level exchange for ObamaCare. The idea was for people who want to sign up for ObamaCare deal with the NC Department of Insurance, instead of the feds in DC.
Folks from the governing class who are familiar with this move see it as a great idea. Some money that would normally be going to DC would instead be kept in Raleigh. (Yay?) We were also told that this move would “pay for itself” for many years to follow.
The ObamaCare exchange was a done deal with the passage of the state budget last year. But this legislation, introduced by senator Ralph Hise (R), caught our attention. What’s going on here?
It appears that Hise’s legislation was meant to offer some clarification to what was passed in the budget last year. Again, we spoke with several folks in Raleigh familiar with discussions on this health care exchange deal. Hise’s bill was introduced on May 1. As of May 21, the folks at the state Department of Insurance — who are designated to administer this thing — had little to no idea of just how many new employees or resources would be needed to get the exchange of the ground.
(In fact, the word is no one at the legislature could be bothered to huddle with the folks at DOI prior to sticking this idea in the budget. *Why keep the folks who will be charged with running this thing in the loop?*) There was also little idea on where the money to fund the setup would come from.
According to one of my Raleigh insiders, the response from Jones Street to questions about where the money was going to come from was: “Don’t worry about the money. We’ll take care of whatever is needed.”
*Sound familiar?*
A good reference point on this is Georgia’s exchange.
Our sources tell us Georgia’s state insurance department needed 35 to 40 new employees to set up and start up the exchange. Setup costs were reportedly estimated to be in the tens of millions. (Do we have that laying around?)
I am so sick of the Obama Republicans who sold us out on Obamacare. Conservatives only won two things in the lawsuit against Obamacare nationally, the right NOT to have a state Obamacare exchange and the right NOT to do the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Now despicable Obama Republicans in the General Assembly with names like Phil Berger, Tim Moore, Destin Hall, Jim Perry, and others have sold us down the river, and sold us out on Obamacare. They were doing Roy Cooper’s bidding and approved a key national Democrat objective. I would leave my ballot blank rather than vote for any of those despicable scoundrels for any office. The weak kneed “go along / get along” fools who knuckled under to the “leadership” on this are almost as bad. We have way too many Undocumented Democrats in the “Republican” caucus.
The Obamacare Medicaid expansion has hurt a lot more people than just the county govenrments, but all of that was very predictable and these sellout “legislative leaders” knew that. One group sold down the river was the hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians who had medical insurance through their employment, who under Obamacare rules no longer qualify for that now that Medicaid is expanded and are forced onto Medicaid instead. Now they risk losing their doctor, as many do not take Medicaid, and they have the shame of being on a welfare type program. Then there are the small businesses whose employee pools for group health plans have been reduced due to employees being forced onto Medicaid, and now have to pay higher premiums for the employees left. Then there are the people already on Medicaid, and I know of two this happened to, where their doctors were leary of a big increase in lower paying Medicaid patients so they stopped taking Medicaid, leaving their previous Medicaid patients adrift having to find new doctors.
Those who led General Assembly GOP legislators to badly betray the Republican base on Obamacare need to be removed from office in the primaries. They are traitors to our party. The lemmings who went along also need replacement. Undocumented Democrats need to be removed from office just as badly as the documented ones.
Actually I think removing undocumented Democrats should be a priority as it could be argued that the traitors among us do more damage.
Doing this without even consulting our Republican Insurance Commissioner on it is appalling. Much less having the transparency to let the public and the Republican base know what was proposed