The Kochs took a hit with the announcement of an Obamacare win in the King v. Burwell Supreme Court decision, but don’t expect that to stop them from doing their damnedest to prevent more people from getting covered. In response to the decision, the Kochs’ political strong arm, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has already released a new ad against Obamacare. AFP and the Kochs are also campaigning hard to prevent the expansion of Medicaid around the country. The latest ACA news has brought back that fight into focus, with North Carolina as one of the key decision states.
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory already rejected the expansion back in 2013, but now the state has a second chance to help cover its nearly 600,000 uninsured residents. The latest calls for change have been met by AFP-North Carolina with dismissal. In a December post on their website, AFP-North Carolina Director Donald Bryson said that “refusing Medicaid expansion is the most important decision Gov. Pat McCrory can make to secure a bright financial future for North Carolina.” And in January, AFP North Carolina declared that its 2015 agenda was simply “defeat of any legislation seeking to expand Medicaid.” Recently, the organization took it one step further in a press release saying, “We remind Governor McCrory and the General Assembly that this Supreme Court decision does not give them license to follow the federal government’s example.”
They’ve been working for some time now to take political control of North Carolina. Now that the Kochs have lost the case they spent millions on, expect them to shore up in North Carolina and do everything they can to prevent the hundreds of thousands of Americans from getting the care they deserve.