Anthony Greco has reported on legislative efforts to design new health benefit exchanges, and Joseph Coletti has told us why that’s a bad idea.
Writing in the latest National Review, Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute adds to Joe’s arguments:
There is simply no rationale for implementing an exchange that stands up to scrutiny. Some governors have indulged the fantasy that they can create a better exchange, one that does not comply with Obamacare. It’s an audacious stratagem. But ask yourself: What insurance company will participate in an exchange that flouts federal law? Before you answer, remember that the federal government is some insurance companies’ largest customer.
And remember that every new bureaucracy is itself a constituency for more government.
It would be better that states not create exchanges at all. “Anytime you can keep a government from setting up any bureaucracy of any sort,” writes Charlie Arlinghaus of New Hampshire’s free-market Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, “it is a victory.”
