The JUA money grab is back in the news. A group is blasting Kelly Ayotte and John Lynch for trying to balance the budget with 110 million from a fund created by the state but filled with money from the pockets of doctors who were forced by law to contribute to it. The thinking goes that because the state forced them to pay in, the state has rights to the money because it (the state) created the underwriting fund.
That’s like buying a big cookie jar, forcing people to put their money in it, and then insisting that money is now yours because it’s your jar.
Jar owner Lynch and AG Ayotte still beleive they were wronged by the State Supreme court when it said "you can’t have the money" which is not unexpected. They also insist that an injustice was done based on the judicial dissent which claims the state has a right to that money.
I’m not a lawyer so let’s skip all that for a moment and boil this down in simple terms.
The state forced someone to put their property in a fund so that the state could then claim ownership of that fund? Did they know this up front?
If the law can be demonstrated to justify such a taking is there not something then wrong with the law?
I think a governor and AG have a commitment not just to execute the laws that are written but to protect us from the ones that are written badly. But that would require more leadership and less of a desire to hide poor management skills by robbing others to cover irresponsible governance.
This is like being mugged. The mugger (the state) sees the money, decides you can part with it because they need it more and feel entitled to it, so they then go about the business of depriving you of it by any means necessary. Hiding behind legal interpretation does not make it right.
And while the NH Supreme court left a backdoor in their decision for new legislation that could change the law, presumably to allow the legislature to legally rob the JUA, wouldn’t it be an encouraging sign if the legislature instead wrote a law that removed the states right to take that property? And wouldn’t it be encouraging to have a governor who was more interested in what was right for New Hampshire than whatever he could justify to cover his and his democrat legislatures collective ass?
