This Wednesday Maine Attorney General William Schneider announced that the Pine Tree State would become the 23rd state participating in Florida’s multi-state suit against Obamacare. With Oklahoma and Virginia each pursuing their own seperate suits, that brought the number of states fighting Obamacare’s budget busting Medicaid expansion to 25.
It didn’t take long for that number to become 26. The Kansas City Star reports:
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt sent a letter Wednesday seeking to join almost two dozen states in challenging the new federal health care reform law.
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Schmidt, a Republican, campaigned on challenging the law. He defeated Steve Six in the November election and took office Monday.“This lawsuit is about standing up for the rule of law and protecting the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution,” Schmidt said in a prepared statement. “Our federal government is designed to be a government of limited, enumerated powers, and we do not believe it has the power to order citizens into commerce so it can then regulate their conduct under authority of the Commerce Clause. Whatever the merits or demerits of health care reform, the ends cannot justify an unconstitutional means.”
In its current form, Medicaid is already bankrupting states across the country. Obamacare only further overloads this already broken system by expanding Medicaid eligibility to include all Americans under 133 percent of the federal poverty level. Of the 34 million Americans who gain health insurance through Obamacare, over half (18 million) will receive it through Medicaid. While Obamacare will pay for all of the benefit expansion for the first three years, and 90% of it after that, Obamacare never pays for any of the state administrative costs for adding those 18 million Americans to their welfare rolls. That amounts to billions in unfunded federal mandates for states to absorb.
