Opinion
Tumbling dice
TBO.com
Published: July 5, 2012
Prior to last week's Supreme Court ruling on the 2010 Affordable Care Act as to how he would respond to whatever the high court ruled, Florida Gov. Rick Scott said the state would comply with federal law. Now that the Supreme Court has held that the act's individual mandate requiring all Americans to have health care insurance or pay a fine is constitutional because it is a tax, Scott is saying Florida won't take two of the actions the act encourages: expanding its Medicaid coverage and setting up exchanges through with people can buy health insurance.Published: July 5, 2012
In taking these stands, Scott, a polarizing figure who won the governor's race in 2010 by a narrow margin and is no shoo-in for re-election in 2014, is, in large measure, staking his political future on opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
Scott says he won't expand Medicaid because the state could not afford to do so without taking money from other vital areas of expenditure, including public education. The exchanges, the governor says, won't produce lower health care insurance costs because the Affordable Care Act requires all insurers to sell the same policy, robbing them of any competitive advantage.
In authoring last week's Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act, Chief Justice John Roberts pointedly declared that the fact that a law is constitutional doesn't guarantee it is a good idea. Scott clearly agrees with Roberts and hopes opposition to the act is good politics.