Understandably, a column about North Carolina’s new health care policies under the Affordable Care Act is not exactly an exciting read on a Wednesday morning. But despite the fact many people reject hearing about boring health insurance, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in North Carolina has been troubling and if we keep disregarding health care in our state on the basis that it is too boring we will never be able to change North Carolina’s health care system for the better.
Beginning with its passage in Congress, the Affordable Care Act promised to insure thousands of previously uninsured people at low rates. In North Carolina, many saw the Affordable Care Act as a very possible step to insuring all North Carolinians in our state, but this has not been the case.
The Affordable Care Act in North Carolina has not delivered on the high hopes many thought it would bring because it was never given a chance to succeed in our state. Due to no flaw in the act itself, Republicans took measures to ensure that it failed immediately after it was signed into law.
If the Affordable Care Act failed — an act championed by President Barack Obama, the leader and face of the Democratic Party — then the Democrats’ public approval would be tarnished, therefore proving advantageous to the Republicans. And so, a Republican-controlled General Assembly and a Republican governor made decisions to limit the Affordable Care Act. A state law returned $74 million to the federal government, money that was given to educate North Carolinians about the Affordable Care Act and how to choose the best plan. Another law barred the state from setting up its own Affordable Care Act exchange and another law forbids the North Carolina Department of Insurance from giving advice on how to shop for a plan under the Affordable Care Act.
The implementation of the Affordable Care Act was doomed to fail in North Carolina before it even began. A national law that had the chance to have positive impacts on our state was never given a chance to succeed because one party saw it as a way to gain an inch on the other party in the next election. This is no way to conduct politics.
While in this case it was the Republicans strong-arming a Democratic policy, the Democrats also use this tactic quite frequently. Both sides are so concerned with stopping the other party’s policies from working that they end up stopping many policies that could actually do great good. Both parties have policy ideas that can help move America forward, but these policies need support of the other party to be given the chance to succeed. Only when both parties support each other’s policies can we see if they actually work or not. By allowing another party’s policy to run unhindered for a few years we can keep the policies which work and scrap the ones that don’t.
The implementation of the Affordable Care Act in North Carolina is a perfect example of what shouldn’t be done. Instead of immediately dismissing an opposing party’s policy and taking steps to ensure it fails, our state should take a step back, let the Affordable Care Act breathe and see if it truly helps or not. Only by doing this can we ensure that the Affordable Care Act works or doesn’t. Leave the Affordable Care Act alone for a bit and if in a few years it has made a positive difference then keep supporting and making it better, but, if it hasn’t made a positive difference, then scrap it and try something different — but only scrap it if it has been given the chance to prove itself without the opposing party trying to make it fail.
