Expanding Medicaid would cost taxpayers either way

This writer and the next one are responding to a Fayetteville Observer editorial, “Health isn’t a partisan issue,”  reprinted in the Post on Jan. 12.

As I recall, the expansion of Medicaid under the ACA (I prefer this as opposed to Obamacare) was going to be 100 percent federally funded for the first three years. After that period of time, the federal share would go down and it would be up to the state to figure out how to continue funding the program. I think the latter is why Gov. Pat McCrory argued against expansion, as it would create a tax burden in trying to keep it going and/or repay the federal government for the funds provided. This was at the same time we owed money to the federal government for unemployment benefits that had to be paid back.

In reading the editorial from the Fayetteville Observer, it tends to make a reader think the money coming from the federal funding won’t raise taxes for N.C. taxpayers. In reality, whether the money comes from state funds or federal funds, it still comes from taxpayers’ pockets.

Please don’t use the Salisbury Post as a sounding block to make Gov. McCrory sound like a demon for not doing this. His position was to not create a new tax bill to pay for this. And please report the full story pertaining to Gov. Roy Cooper pushing this forward. Taxpayers, either from federal funds or from N.C. funds, will foot the bill. One way or another, tax dollars have to pay for this.

The larger question in my mind, looming over the entire access to health care and health care financing discussion, is whether taxpayers overall are ready to foot the bill so we all have a way to pay for our health care. And if we, the taxpayers, are going to pay the bills, then shouldn’t we have a say in what is actually driving up the costs of health care?

— Jim Mundy

Salisbury

Recipients should earn it

After reading the editorials you reprinted from the Fayetteville Observer I must ask, if the people that Gov. Roy Cooper wants to give Medicaid to deserve it, does it not also mean that the people whose money will be taken from them in taxes do not deserve to benefit from their labor? I sincerely doubt the founders of this country intended for government to be a forced charity with elected officials playing the role of God, deciding who is deserving and who is not. Is this not the same thing as a state-sponsored secular religion?

This certainly does not fit what I was taught when I was growing up in the ’50s — that you deserved what you were willing to work for and, if you were not willing to work for it, you did not deserve it, and no excuses were accepted.

Since those who receive the most government benefits tend to vote Democrat, one might be inclined to look at this action as political payoff and or pay for future votes or both.

It would seem to me that government trying to provide a platform that would allow every able person the opportunity and the responsibility to provide for themselves and their families would be more desirable than the opposite course presently being pursued.

— Murray Corriher

Salisbury

Write: Letters to the Editor, Salisbury Post, P.O. Box 4639, Salisbury, NC 28145-4639.

E-mail: letters@salisburypost.com.