With the recent conflicting rulings by federal courts over whether subsidies for health insurance can be used by residents in states relying on the federal health insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, there is discussion of revisiting the creation of a state-run exchange in Michigan.
There could be another push in Lansing to set up a state-run website to purchase insurance through the federal healthcare law. […]Republican Jim Marleau chairs the state Senate Health Policy Committee. He says the federal health exchange has worked well for Michiganders since problems with the website were fixed late last year. But he says he’s still interested in a state-run exchange – especially if issues pop up again.
“I guess the old Boy Scout model in me, you know – ‘Be prepared,’” he says.
Makes good sense, really. It allows Michigan to control its own destiny and to tailor the program to suit the specific needs of our state’s residents.
Tea partiers, however, are in complete freak-out mode about it. This is from a recent email sent out by the Tea Party of West Michigan (actual slogan: “Influence policy, effect [sic] elections, protect the Constitution”). All typos are theirs:
It’s just amazing considering the very ruling that could kill ObamaCare passed through one court and these guys in Lansing (some of them) want to come back and take another bite at trying to pass a Michigan State Exchange. It just goes beyond belief…President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul suffered a potentially crippling blow as a U.S. appeals court ruled the government can’t give financial assistance to anyone buying coverage on the insurance marketplace run by federal authorities.
However, the caveat is where our legislators come in: The decision said the law “unambiguously restricts” the subsidies to insurance bought on state-run exchanges.
In an article for Mackinac Policy Center, “Obamacare’s Survival up to State Legislators” Jack McHugh sums it up: “This case poses an existential threat to the law euphemistically known as “the Affordable Care Act.” If the current decision is upheld, the ACA’s survival will be in the hands of legislators in Michigan and 35 other states. In plain English, Obamacare will likely collapse if its subsidies are not available in more than half the states, or even a significant number of those states.”
And that is why, ladies and gentleman, the legislators who brought you the 2011 bill to create a state Obama Care Exchange SB 693 intend to reintroduce the bill!
And no doubt try to ram it though BEFORE the General Election!
Oh and lets not forget the extra Fed dollars and the benefit to political power brokers,the hospitals and the candidates who gain from their campaign dollars…
This is the state prostituting itself for Federal Funds with strings attached Fed programs like Obama Care and Medicaid. It is why Governor Snyder and his crony legislators want it. M-O-N-E-Y
The hilarious irony of this is that tea partiers are in deep love with the idea of “states rights” and the right of states to self-govern. Yet, when Michigan lawmakers try to do just that with a state-run exchange, the tea party loses their schpadoinkle.
It’s an odd world to live in when a federal program that has resulted in 10 million more Americans getting health insurance coverage, that lowers the deficit, and is contributing to bending the cost curve of health care costs is seen as something demonic and anti-American.
But, that’s the tea party for you: against everything President Obama supports and ready to get out the torches and pitchforks whenever anything that would help poor people, brown people, or minority groups is on the table.
Hell, a group called Overpasses for America is even staging protests over Central American refugee children being housed in Michigan.
When it comes to being “unAmerican”, these people have it in spades.
