By skyforbes 
Cuts are hard. Spending money is much easier.
On Monday, North Carolina became the 40th state to expand Medicaid. Governor Roy Cooper was able to convince a recalcitrant state legislature to go along with the program since the beginning of his first term in 2017. The move will expand low-cost coverage to hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians as well as bringing billions in federal funding into state coffers.
The obvious question is what took the state so long to enact this basic reform. Medicaid expansion was a signature part of the Affordable Care Act. With the stroke of a pen, it has the ability to substantially reduce health care payments and improve life expectancy for families. Medicaid is a generally popular program that aids both low-income families and the elderly. Its expansion in yet another state with partial Republican control shows its general popularity among all parts of the political spectrum.
But more importantly, the expansion points to the difficulty of a continued anti-government crusade for Republicans. One of the country’s strongest Republican parties in a state with a Democratic governor just passed an entitlement expansion with the help of a man they hated. They did not make this decision on a whim. Rather, it is the outgrowth of a politician’s overwhelming urge to please, one that has…