Wall Street Journal: "ObamaCare's Faux Federalism"

From the WSJ:

Having failed to persuade 26 states that participating in ObamaCare is a good deal, the liberals behind the law are denouncing these dissident Governors as federalist hypocrites. A few critics on the right are chiming in and arguing that the 26 are inviting worse results once the feds swoop in.  So someone ought to say a word on behalf of the people who run state governments in the real world and have examined the health insurance "exchange" question in detail. They've seen enough to know that the choice to set up and run these insurance bureaucracies is not a choice at all. The "federalism" ruse is a special instance of bad faith. If federal-state cooperation means anything, then it requires some element of genuine state control and the freedom to innovate. The Health and Human Services Department is abusing the laboratories-of-democracy line as cover even as it prohibits states from doing experiments. And it's dictating details down to the lab coats and microscopes. The folks at HHS envision the exchanges as centralized, interventionist, hyper-regulatory bodies. HHS's idea of flexibility is telling the states they can make the exchanges even more centralized and interventionist. But if they don't agree to that model, then Washington will impose it anyway. The truth is that liberals never wanted the states involved. In 2010, the Pelosi Democrats were forced to swallow a Senate bill that included state exchanges because it was the only ObamaCare vehicle after Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat.  Now HHS is rewriting the law to create federal exchanges that the states only nominally govern. HHS for instance claims states can define the essential benefits that all plans must cover, within federal minimum standards, but those minimums are already much higher now than they were in the draft a few months ago. The Affordable Care Act forces states to use their own personnel and resources to do federal bidding and blurs if not erases the lines of political accountability between levels of government.  ObamaCare also creates new obligations for the states even if they don't opt in. The press corps is uncritically accepting HHS's fantasy about the exchanges as sleek one-stop consumer websites resembling Travelocity or Expedia EXPE +2.83% . Er, this is not how state and local governments operate day to day.

For more of the article visit http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323981504578179493975282974.html?mod=iPhone Tweet