Otter on Obamacare: Wait

“Folks, we all aspire to be more self-reliant,” Gov. Butch Otter told lawmakers today. “We strive for it in our personal lives as well as in the operation of our state government. Few federal edicts in recent years have been more intrusive or more damaging to our self-determination than the Affordable Care Act.”

“There is broad agreement in this body on the need to help tens of thousands of Idahoans with incomes too high to qualify for Obamacare subsidies but too low to afford health care coverage on their own,” he declared. “Just as clearly, there is very little support for expanding Medicaid. I understand that. It would mean subordinating our Idaho priorities to the siren song of federal dollars and neither the national government nor taxpayers can afford it.”

So what should lawmakers do? “Beyond continuing to seek elusive answers to the policy questions that we’ve been asking for years, we now have the option of waiting to see what the Trump administration and Congress do with Obamacare,” the governor said/ Betsy Russell , Eye on Boise. More here.