I’ve recently been receiving notices that constituents of mine have been signing a MoveOn petition urging me to support Senate 514, An Act Establishing a Public Health Insurance Option.
Senate 514 is a serious, well-assembled legislative proposal which speaks to important issues — strengthening competition in the health insurance market place and improving access to affordable health care. That said, I’m reluctant to support it at this time — the health insurance market place is in complete turmoil due to botched rollouts of the Affordable Care Act at both the state and national level. I believe that we need to settle down the web site implementations and also settle down the general market confusion. Then we can see where we are and consider injecting new elements into the system. There is only so much that state regulators and the industry can do at once and they seem to be totally buried right now.
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