Do national exchanges wreck Ben Nelsons abortion compromise?
A few of you have been asking me about this, so I may as well put it up on the blog. The abortion compromise that brought Ben Nelson onto the bill essentially calls for states to do whatever they want within their own exchanges. Moving to a national exchange, as the House bill suggests, sounds like it could muck that up. But it only sounds that way. The national exchange envisioned in the House bill is not national in the sense of being one exchange serving the nation. It’s still a separate exchange in each and every state. The difference between the House and Senate bills is that the Senate lets the states regulate and administer those exchanges unless they prove unable to do so while the House bill hands the federal government the job unless the states ask to do it themselves. To put it more simply, the national exchange is really just a federally-regulated state exchange. There’s no reason that should harm the Nelson compromise, as different states will still be able to choose diffe
