North Carolina's attorney general is joining those from about 20 other states in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a key part of Obamacare. The attorneys general filed a friend-of-the-court brief last week.
The attorneys general are mostly Democrats like Roy Cooper of North Carolina, but a Republican from North Dakota is also in the mix.
They're asking the Supreme Court to uphold a lower court ruling on the tax subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. That court said it's OK for the federal government to offer subsidies even to people who live in a state that did not set up its own online exchange. (A lot of states decided to just piggyback off the federal exchange, including North Carolina.)
Lawyers challenging that ruling say the way Obamacare was written, those subsides should only apply to state exchanges.
Cooper and other attorneys general say such a decision would deprive millions of low- and moderate-income Americans of billions of dollars to help pay for health care – a change that that could cause chaos in the insurance market.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case next month.
