Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (the federal health care law), Gov. Rick Perry said Texas had no intention of implementing its key provisions, such as the establishment of health insurance exchanges. The exchanges will provide private insurance options for families and small businesses. Yet if Perry — and a handful of other Republican governors who agree with him — don’t create the exchanges, “they will bring about precisely what they oppose: a federal takeover of a major part of their states’ insurance systems,” writes Elena Marks, Baker Institute Scholar in Health Policy, in a recent op-ed for Bloomberg news. “The federal government will come in and build an exchange for them, one that will be extremely difficult to tailor to local needs.”
Read Marks’ Aug. 20, 2012, op-ed “Republican governors should want homemade exchanges” to learn why Texans stand to lose if the state does not establish its own health insurance exchanges.