Driving up costs

After the disappointing Supreme Court ruling on June 28, all of our state’s elected officials should stand in opposition to the government overhaul of health care and block the creation of a state-run health insurance exchange.

The exchanges mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are expensive, complex, and intrusive. In order to meet proper guidelines, an exchange will have to comply with over 600 pages of federal regulations, which would only result in higher premiums, more paperwork, and wasted taxpayer money. Further, the exchanges will become vehicles for a variety of new fines and penalties on employers. If an employee receives federal “premium assistance” and chooses to get their insurance through a health exchange instead of through their employer, that employer can be fined up to $3,000 for each employee in his company. For small businesses and individuals in our state, these fines and penalties would be disastrous.

When a state declines to set up an exchange, the federal government then steps in to create (its) own exchange. However, the federal government has no authority to collect fines or penalties on employers as they would through a state-run exchange. The statute only penalizes employers when their employees receive federal premium assistance, which is only awarded to citizens of states with state-run, not federally-run, exchanges.

Though the IRS “clarified” this statute, (its) regulation was a severe overreach of authority, and will not stand up in court. By refusing to establish an exchange, we will be effectively preventing ObamaCare implementation in our state.

We should not waste our state’s already scarce resources to create an ObamaCare exchange. The idea of a market where individuals can compare competing health plans is not in itself a bad idea, but a government-run market would only serve to drive up prices and drive down freedom. If something works, we can be sure the free market can and will create it more efficiently than the government.

In order to encourage growth in both our state and the country, we must reject a state government-sponsored health exchange. Join the fight against this government takeover of health care and help me encourage our representatives to refuse to set up a state health insurance exchange today.