Statement on the Supreme Court’s ACA Decision

The North Carolina Council of Churches celebrates today’s Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act.  For decades, the Council has supported universal health care, and while the current version of Obamacare does not reach that ultimate goal, it has proved to be a crucial step forward.

We are grateful to the justices of the Supreme Court who have upheld the subsidy guaranteeing 6.4 million Americans — more than 450,000 in North Carolina — continued access to care.

Meanwhile, some states, including our own, have chosen to fall even farther behind in providing life-improving, life-prolonging, life-saving care for their citizens because of the refusal to expand Medicaid under the ACA. Too many North Carolinians continue to suffer, and the nation’s highest court has once again reinforced that to be utterly unnecessary.

As believers in a faith that calls on us to care for the most vulnerable, as followers of one called the Great Physician, let us now turn our attention to the expansion of Medicaid, calling on our political leaders to put aside partisan folly so that North Carolinians who remain in need can enjoy basic health care.