Alaska governor rejects state-run health exchange as Friday deadline looms

[Blue_In_AK]

God, how I hate this guy. As I've said here before, Sean Parnell makes me miss Sarah.

http://www.adn.com/2012/11/14/2693040/alaska-governor-rejects-state.html

Gov. Sean Parnell announced in July that Alaska would not create a state-run health insurance exchange, and he is sticking by that, Parnell spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said Tuesday.

Under the federal Affordable Care Act, each state is supposed to have an exchange, a marketplace where residents can shop for private health insurance and apply for federal subsidies to help pay for it, if they are eligible.

States can create the exchanges on their own, or do it in partnership with the federal government, or leave the whole project to the U.S. Department of Health and Social Services.

The deadline for states to declare that they'll run their own health exchange is Friday.

Alaska will neither do that, nor partner with the federal government on a joint exchange, Leighow said.

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[ladjf]

1. Congratulations Alaskans. Your idiot Governor just cost all of you a lot of money. Way to

go Republicans.

[Blue_In_AK]

4. Oh, that's not the half of it.

He wants to give a $2 billion a year tax break to Big Oil in the hopes that they will increase production but with absolutely no guarantees that they will put that money back into the state. In other words, they could take the $2 billion off to Azerbajian or wherever, and our state budget would be left holding the bag. He's SUCH a tool.

Former lobbyist for ConocoPhillips and attorney with the law firm that represented Exxon during the spill litigation. Oh, yeah, he has Alaskans' interests at heart ... NOT!

And, of course, they gerrymandered so that he now has a rubber-stamp legislature. I could die. The rest of the country moves forward and Alaska goes back to the '80s.

[ladjf]

6. Hellooooh Alaska. Anybody home? nt

[ProudProgressiveNow]

2. Very foolish move....

[teddy51]

3. I'm sorry that you people must put up with this crap! As if Palin wasn't bad enough to have

to deal with.

[Blue_In_AK]

5. It's terribly upsetting.

Most real Alaskans are good, honest people but the Pipeline brought in an element that completely laid waste our progressive beginnings as a state. It's so sad.

[Hoyt]

7. Letting feds control exchange is not a bad thing. Opting out of Medicaid is.