Addressing the National Governor’s Association yesterday, President Obama said he would allow some states to opt out of the Affordable Care Act, the health-care reform bill passed a year ago. Under the current law, states have the option of creating their own health-care policy and opting out of the Act in 2017. Obama said he’d be willing to let them out of it from the very beginning, in 2014. But in order to do so, states would have to prove that they would cover the same amount, or more, people that will be covered in the ACA. House Republican leaders have already said they’d block this proposal, as they have the larger goal of repealing the entire health-care bill. While they won’t be able to do that alone (there’s still the Senate, and Obama, to deal with), they are crossing their fingers that one of a handful of legal challenges to the constitutionality of the bill will eventually be successful.
