Republican governors in four states have announced their intention not to build health insurance (HIX) exchanges, as required under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to Joseph Goedert.
Under the law, health insurance exchanges will be established anyway by the federal government, in states that decline to have one operational by 2014, Goedert wrote.
The states are Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Wisconsin. And other states are considering it, including Oklahoma, while New Jersey, North Carolina and Texas also say they may not comply.
Fox News puts the number at 18. Governor Rick Perry of Texas says he will not comply with the Medicaid expansion contained in the ACA, either.
Some states are not baldly saying no. Goedert reveals that Florida will comply with HIX provisions if the reform law or the HIX provisions are not repealed before Jan. 1, 2014. But Florida governor Rick Scott says he won’t expand Medicaid to cover the uninsured – an option the Supreme Court left up to state governments.
Goedert reported that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker halted work on an exchange in 2011, pending the Supreme Court ruling, and will only decide whether or not to go forward after the November elections.
According to Goedert’s story, 75 members of the House and Senate oppose the creation of state insurance exchanges. “These expensive, complex and intrusive exchanges impose a threat to the financial stability of our already fragile state economies with no certainty of a limit to total enrollment numbers,” a letter sent to the National Governors Association asserts.
The GOP’s website puts it even more strongly at its website, saying healthcare reform will “kill jobs, raise taxes and increase the cost of care,” as the website states, and roundly oppose the individual mandate, which stipulates that all Americans must have health insurance by 2014 or face penalties.
Edited by
Braden Becker
