State Refusal on Healthcare Exchanges More Effective than Nullification

I believe states’ refusal to set-up healthcare exchanges under Obamacare will set the stage for the law’s ultimate collapse and eventual repeal. While some have said that states should nullify Obamacare, which I don’t think is the winning strategy, I’d argue that states’ refusal to implement the exchanges will up end Obamacare faster than a legal challenge. The more states that oppose Obamacare’s full implementation, the more likely it will collapse under its own weight; it’s just a matter of time. It will be nullification by mathematics, not by expensive legal battles that won’t go the way of upending this Constitutional usurpation.

Lately, I’ve seen a handful of folks running around town with a bumper sticker that states a fact that’s simply unsupportable: “I love Obamacare.” Now, it’s not that I’m just personally opposed to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but that this is an assertion that cannot be reasonably made due to lack of evidence. It’s difficult for someone to declare love or disdain for something they do not know, which certainly includes the not-fully-implemented national healthcare law. What I have discovered in conversations with folks that have these kinds of stickers is that they are in love with the idea of Obamacare, but that they don’t know much about the law itself.

Case in point, one of the most oft-cited reasons for supporting the PPAC by its advocates is that it will “lower healthcare costs for all Americans.” Well, this is objectively false by any reasonable standard. Study after study has shown that the costs of private health insurance premiums have skyrocketed, and that the cost of medical care has continued to severely outpace the rate of salary growth and inflation. This is, in effect, a tax on middle income Americans who are already struggling with the most severe economic times in our lifetime. To add insult to injury, this tax hike on those who are already hurting is paying for a lower quality of healthcare.

For these reasons, I support Governor Nikki Haley’s decision not to set up an Obamacare exchange in South Carolina. This supposedly “paid for” expansion of a Medicaid program already swimming in a sea of red ink would amount to fiscal insolvency for our state government, and higher taxes for all our citizens. That’s because the expansion will increase Medicaid eligibility to folks that currently don’t qualify, is paid for the first few years by the Feds, and then starts shifting the costs to the states. It starts off as a net gain for the states, but then becomes an all-encompassing obligation as the months and years drag on. Simply put, there’s not enough money in South Carolina to pay for what Obamacare would require of our state, and critical services from education to law enforcement would suffer as a result.

The full implementation of Obamacare would crush the American economy, but I don’t believe the full implementation will occur. That’s because the states have become, in the words of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, “the last line of defense.” As now twenty-six states have declined to participate in the destruction of our healthcare system via Obamacare, the Federal government is in a very difficult spot. They will have to step in and set-up the exchanges themselves, in over twenty-six different markets, within the next twelve to twenty-four months. This isn’t even possible.

I’d encourage Governor Haley and her fellow GOP Governors to stand strong in opposing the implementation of Obamacare in their respective states. This healthcare monstrosity is certain to fail, and the states shouldn’t have any financial stake in it when it does. By exploiting the Supreme Court’s loophole from last year’s Obamacare ruling, which states that states cannot be compelled to implement healthcare exchanges, the states can reassert their authority against a Federal government that thinks it’s the only authority.

Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli was right: the states are our “last line of defense.”