Kansas AG takes a balanced view on health care

opinions

March 26, 2012 - 12:00 AM

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt is going to Washington to sit in on the arguments being made in the Supreme Court for and against the Affordable Health Care Act. Schmidt is one of 26 Republican state attorneys general who filed challenges to President Barack Obama’s health care reform legislation.

Unlike some of those 26, Schmidt thinks the decision could go either way. If the court focuses on the nation’s health care needs, the court may allow the law to stand. If it dwells instead on the power it gives the government to require individuals to buy health care insurance or face a fine and requires the states to greatly expand the Medicaid system to cover those who do not have it, then it may void those particular parts of the law, he said.

Schmidt, like many other Republicans who sought election in 2010, used his opposition to the law as the main plank in his platform. It is not a coincidence the states that filed challenges to the law all had Republican governors and/or attorneys general. Perhaps no election since 1860 has been so dominated by a single issue.

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