Mitch Daniels Raises 2012 Profile with Op-Ed Blasting Obama's Health Care Law
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate, raised his national profile today with a Wall Street Journal op-ed today blasting President Obama's health care reforms.
Daniels argues the new laws place undue burden on state governments. He specifically criticizes the state-based exchange system expected to be implemented in 2014 under the new laws, and he lays out reforms to the system that he and 20 other governors have endorsed in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
"If there's to be a train wreck, we governors would rather be spectators than conductors," Daniels wrote. "But if the federal government is willing to reroute the train to a different, more productive track, we are here to help."
Under the new health care laws, the states are also expected to expand their Medicaid rolls, and Daniels writes that the expansion could cost Indiana taxpayers $2.6 billion to $3 billion over the next 10 years.
"This is a huge burden for our state, and yet another incremental expenditure the law's authors declined to account for truthfully," he says.
Additionally, state governments are expected to set up exchanges -- or health insurance "marketplaces" -- for some citizens in need of health care.
Daniels writes that attempting to set up the exchanges could result in a "first-rate operational catastrophe" for the states, which would be responsible for setting up and running a complex system based on new federal rules. If a state declines to participate, the federal government would have to operate the exchange directly. Daniels writes that this prompted him to pen the letter to Sebelius, where he proposed certain conditions under which he and other governors would agree to create the exchanges themselves.
"Most fundamentally, the system we are proposing requires Washington to abandon most of the command-and-control aspects of the law as written," Daniels writes.
The governor asks for the flexibility to decide which insurers are permitted to sell insurance policies in the exchange, the freedom to move some Medicaid beneficiaries to the exchange, and for the states to receive reimbursement from the federal government for the costs they incur, among other things.
Daniels, who is term-limited out of the governor's office this year, has generated presidential buzz by keeping his state in relatively sound fiscal condition with moves like reducing the number of state workers and raising sales taxes. He angered social conservatives, however, when he suggested a "truce" on social issues.
While he largely focuses on the particulars of the state-based exchange system in his op-ed, Daniels also gives sweeping criticisms of the new reforms.
"Unless you're in favor of a fully nationalized health-care system, the president's health-care reform law is a massive mistake," he writes.
