By Connor Radnovich | Cronkite News
WASHINGTON – Arizona gave up on running its own health-insurance exchange and turned the job over to the federal government instead because of uncertainty over how a state program would work, an Arizona official testified Thursday.
“While Gov. (Jan) Brewer is a strong advocate of local control, there were too many unknowns about how a state-based exchange would operate for Arizona to proceed,” Don Hughes told the Senate Finance Committee.
Hughes, the executive director of Arizona’s health insurance exchange and a health adviser to Brewer, testified that when the state made its decision last fall, many of the federal rules that will guide the program were still in draft form.
“You can’t make decisions based upon draft rules,” said Hughes, noting that many of those rules are still drafts three months later.
That lack of progress was the focus of senators on the committee, who grilled the federal bureaucrat in charge of the health insurance exchange program.
The exchanges, which are part of the federal health-care reform act often called “Obamacare,” are supposed to be online marketplaces where consumers can apply for health insurance. They need to be operating by Oct. 1 when open enrollment is scheduled to begin.
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