Governor Dalrymple On Obamacare Exchanges: “For The Time Being We Shouldn’t Take Any Action”

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Written By:
Rob Port

Jul 25, 2012
8:28pm

Earlier today I posted about a meeting of the North Dakota legislature’s Health Care Reform Committee where the issue of the Obamacare health insurance exchanges was discussed. Republican Rep. George Keiser, who chairs the committee, is a supporter of the exchanges but his committee heard testimony from Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm and a representative of Governor Jack Dalrymple’s office both of whom oppose implementation of the exchanges.

Governor Dalrymple was on Scott Hennen’s radio show today and was asked about his position on the exchanges and he went into greater detail.

Note that Governor Dalrymple isn’t making an ideological argument against the exchanges, which would be a bit more comforting. I don’t think there’s anything about government-controlled markets for health insurance that Republicans, who claim to be for limited government and free markets, should be supporting. But that’s not where Dalrymple goes. If he has ideological objections to the exchanges he’s not expressing them. Rather, his objection is to the uncertainty of the exchanges (which was the thrust of Commissioner Hamm’s objections earlier today).

Hamm said during his testimony that, more than two and a half years in, we still don’t know what sort of regulations the federal government will apply to these exchanges. So just as a practical matter, setting all aside ideology and politics, implementing the exchanges would mean obligating the state to something that has yet to be defined by the federal government.

That’s a bad deal for the state.