Posted on 04/16/2015 8:50:11 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that he will take legal action against President Obama’s federal healthcare agency for stopping Low Income Pool (LIP) healthcare funds to Florida in order to force the state to take Legislative action to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.
Governor Rick Scott said, “It is appalling that President Obama would cut off federal healthcare dollars to Florida in an effort to force our state further into Obamacare. The President’s healthcare agency sent us a letter this week saying the ‘the future of LIP’ and ‘Medicaid expansion are linked.’ But, the Supreme Court has already ruled in NFIB v. Sebelius that the President cannot force Medicaid expansion on states. In fact, the Court ruled that the President could not use ‘gun to the head’ approaches in pushing for Medicaid expansion.
“Not only does President Obama’s end to LIP funding in Florida violate the law by crossing the line into a coercion tactic for Obamacare, it also threatens poor families’ access to the safety net healthcare services they need. The population in Florida served under the LIP program is different from the population that would be covered under any Medicaid expansion, as is well documented in a recent Urban Institute report that said Florida would still have $1.6 billion in uncompensated care costs with or without an expansion of Medicaid.
“We will fight to protect the healthcare of Floridians, and their right to be free from federal overreach. Our citizens already pay federal taxes that go into the federal LIP program. Now, President Obama has decided that the state must take on a larger Medicaid program, forcing our taxpayers to pay even more to government, before they get their own federal tax dollars back. This is outrageous, and specifically what the Supreme Court warned against.
“Our democracy is designed so that state governments can make the decision to not take on federal programs that will ultimately cost state taxpayers billions of dollars. We will not pass this cost on to our citizens in Florida and we will continue to fight for the federal LIP dollars our citizens already pay for with their federal taxes.”
Florida news
Good job, Scott.
it’s best to wean off federal money.
it loosens their power over the state
Wonder if a president Mitt would have done similar shenanigans. Wonder what president Hillary will do.
Boy it sure is great that we gave the republicans a mojority in both houses to fix this sort of crap. /s
Way to go Scotty!...................
By demanding that the federal government restore the federal funds used to pay for the healthcare. Am I the only one to see the irony here?
It's business as usual in the District of Corruption run by millionaire crooks with billions of other people's money to use to gain power and influence.
Governor
Stop sending money to the Dept. of Education.
In the long run of course the problem you cite needs to be addressed.
In the meantime, Scott is absolutely right to fight this battle.
Since he's known that the funding would end for the past year or two then I'd say he's on very shaky ground.
Rick Scott has sorry approval numbers, because the media is not kind to him...but boy he is spot on here. The more states that take on Mothra in the white house and we destroy the monster that is Obamacare the better.
Freegards
LEX
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
In fact, the Supreme Court has historically clarified that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue, intrastate healthcare in this example, which Congress cannot justify under its constituitonal Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
So the “federal” funding that Gov. Scott wants to take legal action against Obama for should have never left the state in the first place imo.
The reason that the feds wrongly appropriated taxes for intrastate healthcare purposes is the following imo. As a consequence of the ill-conceived 17th Amendment, low-information citizens go home after voting for their favorite federal senators and watch football, oblivious to the idea that their corrupt senators are working in cahoots with the corrupt House to pass unconstitutional legislation like the bill that established Obamacare.
The 17th Amendment needs to disappear.
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