Video: Governor Dalrymple Comes Out Against Health Care Exchanges

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Written By:
Rob Port

Jul 25, 2012
12:04pm

Today the North Dakota legislature’s Health Care Reform Committee met and heard testimony from, among others, state Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm and Tami Ternes, a representative from Governor Jack Dalrymple’s office.

The committee is chaired by state Rep. George Keiser, an outspoken proponent of the exchanges, but both Hamm and Ternes pushed back against implementation.

Commissioner Hamm indicated that he remained against implementation noting that it would require a significant financial obligation from the state for policy that hasn’t been proven to be workable. “Make the federal government prove they can make the exchanges work,” said Hamm. He went on to note that if the exchanges are something North Dakota wants to implement later we can. “If they do prove that, North Dakota could if it wanted take over the exchange.”

Hamm also pointed out that the state would have little opportunity to make a state-implemented exchange differ in any significant way from a federally-implemented exchange.

For her part, Ternes told the committee that Governor Dalrymple opposed the state implementation of health care exchanges during the special session last year when the state House voted it down and that he is “not convinced” there is any reason to deviate from that position now. That’s good news for those opposed to the exchanges, as any slim chance that implementation might sneak through both hoses of the legislature it’s unlikely the exchanges would gain enough steam to overturn a veto. The governor’s office might say that this announcement today isn’t really news, and no doubt they’d deny that it had anything to do with a certain coalition of conservative groups (SAB included) making some noise on this issue earlier this week. That Dalrymple has been against the exchanges all along. Maybe that’s true, but the governor hasn’t exactly been outspoken about his opposition. This assurance, though not directly from the governor, is a positive development.

Rep. Jim Kasper also re-iterated his opposition to the exchanges acknowledging that he’d previously been for a state-level implementation. SayAnythingBlog.com broke the news of Kasper’s shift on this position over a week ago.

Here’s the video:

Update: Here’s expanded footage of the testimony and questioning, though not the complete hearing because a) I started late and b) the streaming kept cutting out.