Obamacare Ruling Vindicates North Dakota’s Decision To Pass On Implementing Health Care Exchanges

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Written By:
Rob Port

Jun 28, 2012
9:51am

If there is a silver lining in the Obamacare ruling – and to be sure, I’m really stretching looking for that silver lining right now – it’s that the Supreme Court took away the federal government’s power to punish states for not implementing Obamacare (read the full ruling here).

A number of states – North Dakota among them – passed on implementing the health care exchanges in part because those states were also challenging the legality of the law in court. But in upholding the legality of most of the law, the Supreme Court seems to have gutted the mechanism by which the law would punish states for not implementing the exchanges.

Democrats, and even some Republicans like Rep. Jim Kasper and Rep. George Kaiser, were insistent during the special legislative session late last year that the state needed to be in compliance with Obamacare and implement the exchanges. Governor Dalrymple’s administration, along with conservative members of the legislature, helped kill off those exchanges.

It looks like that was the right move.