Why Medicaid mandates on states violate the General Welfare Clause

Given the enormous sums involved, sending their tax payments to other states would make it nearly impossible for Texans to fund their own system of medical assistance to the poor: Texas’s poor citizens would suffer while the state’s tax payments would go to support the poor in other states. Taking from one state to benefit 49 others is as much a violation of the general-welfare clause as the Cornhusker Kickback, which proposed taking from 49 states to benefit one.

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In short, the real key to the Medicaid challenge by the 20 states is not simply that withholding Medicaid funding is coercive. It is that the taxes paid by citizens of a state that opts out of Medicaid would no longer be spent in support of the general welfare of each and every one of the states—including itself.

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