The Federal Health Care Law was 996-pages long with one noteworthy six-page excerpt creating Health Insurance Exchanges (HIE). A health exchange is like most ideas: sounds great but can be a disaster in the hands of the government. Under the federal Health Care take-over HIE are the vehicle President Obama will use to force millions of people into government run health care.

Arkansas bureaucrats rushed forward to implement a HIE by accept federal monies with all of their strings attached. However, a bipartisan coalition of legislators stood their ground and stopped the rush to be the first in line. See where you Representative or Senator stands at the link below.

Health Insurance Exchanges are being sold to states for their flexibility, but the hundreds of pages of rules and restrictions eliminate any state control. The first set of regulations regarding exchanges was 426 pages long. Exchanges first must be approved by HHS and must be based on rules they alone establish. Afterwards any changes must receive HHS’s stamp of approval, giving the Federal Government tremendous power to control Arkansans’ insurance. Creating an Exchange makes Arkansas nothing more than the bureaucratic arm of the Federal Government.

Even if Arkansas creates it’s own Exchange, every decision from Web page designer to Insurance policies has to be approved by the federal government, making it little more than a faux board paid for by fees on Arkansas insurance plans.

Support for a state-based Exchange, also, opens the door to a tax on businesses in the state. If an employee purchases from an Exchange because his or her insurance is "unaffordable" and the employee is eligible for a federally provided tax credit, the employer is fined $3,000 per instance. However due to an error in the language in the bill, only state-based exchanges provide tax credit eligibility. Therefore, support of a state-based exchange is support for a $3,000 tax on Arkansan businesses.

Finally, implementing an Arkansas exchange requires that Arkansas businesses turn over your health insurance policies to the IRS to police. This is another unfunded mandate on businesses that are already struggling under government over-regulation.

So why the rush? A federal judge who declared "ObamaCare" unconstitutional stated that states who are implementing parts of the President’s healthcare reform make it more difficult for the Supreme Court to eventually declare this disastrous law unconstitutional.

That's why states like Kansas, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Oklahoma have not accepted federal money to start an exchange.

A better option for Arkansas would be to join the 26 other states participating in the lawsuit. Arkansas should fight the implementation of President’s Health Care Plan, not be the first to to accept monies with strings attached, and spent on implementing a policy that is bad for Arkansans and bad for businesses.

Special thanks to bi-partisan opposition to bad public policy.

CLICK HERE to see where your legislators stand on this important issue. Please note: two emails were sent to legislators and follow up phone calls in a majority of districts. Legislators with no position listed have not responded to our efforts to contact them.