We’ve heard some squawking from the usual loudmouths on the right that North Carolina will go broke if it takes part in the feds’ high risk health insurance pool. As is too often the case, however, they’re wrong. Most of the health care reform enacted this year won’t go into effect until 2014, so the federal government is setting up temporary “high risk pools” along with the states’ governments, in an effort to ease the strain on  hard-to-insure patients.

As Adam Linker at NC Policy Watch explains, North Carolina will run its own pool, which will operate beside the state high risk pool. Contrary to critics’ predictions of a bankrupt system, North Carolina has received a written guarantee that the federal government will pay for patients in the federal high risk pool, while the state continues paying for the state pool. So, in other words, it’s taken care of, meaning the Fox/Rush crowd will have to find some other imaginary policy to gripe about.