WISCONSIN, November 11, 2015– During Tuesday night’s Republican undercard debate hosted by Fox Business News, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie tried to convince America that he stood up to the Obama agenda when he claimed that, as Governor, he “stopped Obamacare in New Jersey because we refused to participate in the federal exchange.” While some of that statement is partly true, Christie actually followed along with other liberal governors and took steps to save Obamacare.
According to the Tenth Amendment Center, a states’ rights organization dedicated to fighting federal overreach, there are four steps that states needed to take in order to stop Obamacare in their state.
The first step is refusing to set up a state exchange. In 2012, Christie vetoed a state health insurance exchange bill.
Under Obamacare, the federal government is relying heavily on states to use their own resources to support the law by setting up a state exchange. Why? Because the federal government simply couldn’t handle implementing the law on their own.
However, Christie stopped short of doing anything else to stop Obamacare. In fact, he propped it up.
The next thing states could have done to help kill Obamacare was to refuse to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. However, Governor Christie accepted Medicaid expansion in New Jersey.
In fact, the Wall Street Journal ran an article noting that Christie’s move to expand Medicaid under Obamacare had angered Republicans.
The third thing Christie could have done to stop Obamacare was to prohibit the State Insurance Commissioner from investigating and enforcing health insurance requirements. However, Christie did not do so.
Finally, Christie could have used legislation to block the IRS’s ObamaCare taxes by suspending the licenses of insurers that accept the subsidies. “Since no insurer would then accept one, not a single employer in the state could be hit with the employer-mandate penalties those subsidies trigger,” states the Tenth Amendment Center. However, Christie didn’t do so.
Judge Andrew Napolitano said that if a number of states were willing to follow the above 4 steps, then Obamacare would be gutted.
Taken together, had Christie performed these four steps, he could have actually stopped the implementation of Obamacare in New Jersey. However, he did the opposite, which actually saved Obamacare in New Jersey.
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