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So the Joint Fiscal Committee will be discussing whether to accept $2 million in federal funding to implement health insurance reform this morning. If they don't, it's completely wrong. That federal money is OUR money, money NH taxpayers sent to the US government with our federal tax payments. New Hampshire needs that money to follow the law. This is not the 1830s, for goodness sake! Nullification was used to keep human slavery going, now it is being used to keep people slaves to a broken health care system.
One million dollars is to set up an exchange, the other million is to help the state investigate premium increases and make sure they are justified.
The folks at the NH Department of Insurance put a great deal of effort into explaining the importance of accepting these grants to the new majority.
Leslie Ludtke (of the state Insurance Department):"The education really was to ensure that we understood, they understood, the federal government understood, that it was a common understanding all around that by accepting the million in funding for the first phase of these grants that the state of NH was making no commitments relative to implementing federal reform."
Fiscal Committee Chairman Ken Weyler says he's comfortable with the "no strings attached" approach that Insurance Commissioner Roger Sevigny described to him.
Representative Ken Weyler:"He feels that we need to be prepared. Even if Obamacare is canceled, he would do it on a contract, so that if something happens between giving him the money and Obamacare going away, he'd be able to cancel the contract."
In any event, if the state doesn't design an exchange, it will have to accept a boilerplate fed version.
State Senator Ray White (R-Bedford) and Rep. Ken Weyler (R-Kingston) both refer to "Obamacare". That's just playing to their base. But go ahead, party like it's 2009. Only 18% of Americans want reform repealed.
