Federal Exchange Grants Fertilize Obamacare

Over at The Health Care Blog, Merrill Goozner cheers Republican governors who are taking federal money to develop Obamacare exchanges.

Mr. Goozner asserts that the shower of federal Obamacare grants enables states to act as "laboratories of democracy.  If only! Accepting federal grants to implement Obamacare is far from the idea of states being "laboratories of democracy". It's the kind of thinking that led George W. Bush to impose No Child Left Behind on states' schools.

It would be better to leave health care to individual choice, rather than democracy. Nevertheless, if we insist on surrendering it to government control, then at least let's admit that increasing dependence on federal grants results only in making states more accountable to the federal government, and less to their own citizens.

I trust that Mr. Goozner won't take this personally, but I hope that every Republican governor who is taking federal money to develop an exchange reads this column and realizes that he is being lured into a potentially irreversible blunder. Accepting federal grants and hiring consultants to advise on exchanges will only fertilize Obamacare, allowing it to sink its roots deeper into the soil over the next two years. This will make its ultimate defeat more difficult.

I have written a few op-eds urging states not to collaborate with the Obamacrats to establish exchanges.  They are based on two articles: here and here.