Does Fortuno support Obamacare?
Anyhow IMO all FR opposition for Puerto Rico statehood stems from fear it would develop into a solid rat state. An issue you have addressed before Auh2. It would be my only reservation.
For decades PR had an island-wide network of public hospitals, and in the 1990s Gov. Rosselló (a pro-statehood, pro-business Democrat) privatized almost all of the public hospitals but gave health-insurance benefits to low-income residents (”la Tarjeta de Salud,” the healthcare card). The Tarjeta became so popular among people (some of whom gave up their employer-paid plans to get it) and doctors (the Tarjeta has low deductibles, if any) that it has become a huge strain on PR’s already bloated budget. Gov. Fortuño is too cowardly to cut benefits, so he sees ObamaCare as a way for the feds to subsidize the Tarjeta.
That, in a nutshell, is the problem with “Commonwealth status”: few PR voters have to pay federal income taxes, so most voters see increased federal spending as an asset without being tempered by the liability of having to pay higher taxes. It is also why one can’t assume that because voters in PR support public spending that is subsidized by U.S. taxpayers that they would similarly support so much public spending if PR becomes a state, since at such time they would start paying federal income taxes. (Everyone in PR already pays Social Security and Medicare taxes, but few realize that their payments are used for unrelated federal spending.)