Minnesota House passes health exchange bill; moves to Senate on Thursday

pioneer press ^ | 3-4-13 | Christopher Snowbeck

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Democrats in the state House of Representatives pushed forward a key provision of the federal health care overhaul by voting Monday, March 4, to create a health insurance exchange for Minnesota.

The federal law, which was passed in 2010, calls for the creation of state-level health exchanges where individuals and small businesses can purchase coverage beginning in October.

The marketplaces are meant to make it easier for consumers to comparison shop for health insurance. Federal subsidies will be available for many shopping on the exchange, and should thereby fulfill the federal law's goal of increasing the share of Americans with health insurance.

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Obama Admin Rebranding Healthcare 'Exchanges' as 'Marketplaces'

Democrats understand that when they are losing a political fight, their best move is to change the political lexicon. When progressivism fails, they become liberals; when liberalism fails, they become progressives. Now they’re using that rhetorical trickery to try to save the wildly unpopular centerpiece of President Obama’s first term: Obamacare.

Obamacare sets up what were originally termed state health care “exchanges.” These “exchanges” were supposedly set up to pool risk between health care insurance companies. Of course, if the market saw a benefit in such pooling, it would have done so already. In fact, many insurance companies already pool risks to broaden their enrollment.

But pooling risk isn’t the Obama administration’s real agenda. Actually, the exchanges are meant to pay insurance companies to implement Obamacare. In order to qualify for the exchanges, insurance companies can only charge certain prices and must cover certain services. But that means that the government – i.e. taxpayers – must subsidize the exchanges to make them work. If states refuse to set up the Obamacare exchanges, the federal government is supposed to set up its own exchanges, making that cost federal.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/20/Obamacare-exchanges-marketplace

The Obamacare Exchange is not for buying health insurance and its not a marketplace.

This sweeping bill imposes an IT superstructure. It hooks states up to a a national database of all your private data (the Federal Data Services Hub) for the purpose of:

tracking your insurance status, imposing penalties under individual and employer mandate, forcing people into government health (including the middle class through subsidized policies) and imposing national health care.

The “Exchange” is not a marketplace. It’s a federal website (”state” in name only) on the federal Hub.

The bill sets up a federally-controlled board of seven political appointees in charge of maintaining 24/7 online IT connections with the Federal Data Services Hub.

In MN, The board is exempt from many state laws including rulemaking (you’ll have no meaningful right to object to anything it does) and the Minnesota Government data practices Act (you’ll have no transparency, no access to government records, no protections and no penalties).