"Health Law Critics Seek to Gut It by Attacking Exchanges"

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Health Law Critics Seek to Gut It by Attacking Exchanges

By Shannon Pettypiece & Jonathan D. Salant at Bloomberg

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-28/health-law-critics-seek-to-gut-it-by-attacking-exchanges.html

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Opponents of President Barack Obama’s health-care law are gearing up for a new round of attacks, this time targeting the legislation’s insurance exchanges that would expand coverage to millions of Americans.

Heritage Action for America, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, and the Tea Party-aligned group FreedomWorks will push Congress to cut off funding for the exchanges in the debate later this year over raising the debt ceiling, the Washington-based groups said. The chairman of the advocacy group Restore America’s Voice, Ken Hoagland, said he plans to warn people through advertising about the “dysfunctional” exchanges.

While opposition to the health-care program is nothing new, the tactics are changing. Rather than focusing on repealing the law in Congress and the courts, two avenues that have failed so far, the groups are aiming to prevent the cornerstone of the legislation, the insurance exchanges, from succeeding. Their goal is to limit enrollments, drive up costs, and make it easier to roll back all or part of the law later.

“If you’re committed to making sure Obamacare doesn’t go into effect, you have to focus on the expansion and on the exchanges,” said Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action. “Once you have people under a program, it’s really hard to change that system no matter how badly it needs change.”

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