Several states await Supreme Court decision before driving forward with insurance exchanges

Health Care ReformA number of states have indicated that they aren’t yet pushing ahead on their creation of the insurance exchanges that are required by the Obama Administration’s healthcare overhaul until the Supreme Court has made its decision regarding whether or not that element of the reform is overturned or repealed.

The primary concern with this tactic, though, is that by that point, it may be too late to begin working on the insurance exchanges in order to have them in place by the deadline. The Obama Administration will be making the decision on January 1, 2013 regarding which states are prepared to run their own exchanges and which ones will have this task done for them by the federal government.

Republican state legislators and governors across the nation are in a disagreement as to how they should be proceeding. While some would like to take a more defensive tactical stance by establishing very basic exchanges where there are minimal features so that the federal government will not be able to take control, those that are more conservative would rather not have anything to do with the exchanges.

While Nebraska Republican Governor Dave Heineman has said that his state will make enough of an effort so that it will not “default to the federal government,” he also said that this will “be a costly mistake to spend millions of taxpayer dollars” if the Supreme Court decides to challenge this part of the healthcare law. Therefore, he intends to wait for the ruling in June.

These insurance exchanges are central to the Obama Administration’s 2010 healthcare law that promises to make medical care affordable to all Americans.

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