Anti-'Obamacare' legislation building in House

BOISE (AP) — Last year, House Republicans attempted to drop a bomb on "Obamacare" by nullifying the federal health care overhaul.

After that state sovereignty gambit failed, they're now pursuing a new strategy, employing more-precise strikes to keep provisions of President Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act from creeping into state laws governing everything from contraceptive coverage to insurance rate hikes.

Call it nullification writ small, as the House GOP uses its strong majority to block what it sees as a Democratic-led U.S. Congress's overreach — not by obliterating the 2010 law all at once, but by detonating smaller, targeted explosions to stop the reforms from gaining an Idaho beachhead.

Among numerous examples, House members will almost certainly spurn a $20.3 million U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant to pay for an insurance exchange, the online, federally subsidized marketplace envisioned by the reforms to give individuals and small businesses a place to shop for insurance.

"We're going on the defensive," said Rep. Vito Barbieri, R-Dalton Gardens. "We're finding ourselves having to put out fires as they come up."

By contrast, Washington and Oregon, Idaho's neighbors to the west, are moving ahead with their insurance exchanges without pause.

How else are Gem State representatives trying to throw a monkey wrench in the health overhaul's gears?

For starters, House lawmakers also rejected expanding Medicaid to cover smoking cessation for pregnant moms; still another proposal would let private Idaho companies ignore a requirement for their health insurance plans to cover contraception.

This is the third year Idaho lawmakers are living in the federal health care overhaul's shadow, something that started in 2010 when they were the nation's first legislators to require a state to sue over the reforms. The U.S. Supreme Court holds hearings this month, on litigation brought by 27 states over whether the federal government can force people to buy insurance.

Last year, right-leaning House members like Barbieri resurrected Thomas Jefferson's 200-year-old theory contending states, not the U.S. Supreme Court, were the ultimate arbiters of constitutionality.

Idaho senators eventually killed the measure, on concern it contradicts the federal supremacy clause.

Even so, Rep. Carlos Bilbao, R-Emmett, sponsor of the proposed contraception exemption, said debate remains less about health care — and more about protecting individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. "It goes deeper," Bilbao contends. "This has raised an awareness, to look at the constitutionality of other bills."

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader John Rusche, D-Lewiston and a medical doctor, laments that much of what's being rejected is actually good public policy, whether it's part of Obama's reforms or not: Contraception is for more than just birth control, he said; when moms quit smoking, they have healthier babies, costing Medicaid less.

He also points to Monday's 9-6 House Business Committee rejection of a proposed new insurance law establishing standards for excessive or discriminatory rate increases.

The panel's majority took exception with aligning state law with provisions contained in the hated federal reforms, but Rusche contends this only invites the intervention of federal regulators to decide whether rate hikes by Idaho's insurers are fair.

"Demonstrating Idaho sovereignty by turning industry management over to the federal government is just astonishing to me," Rusche said, adding politics are also in play: It's an election year, where many Republicans aim to bring home proof that they stood strong against Washington, D.C. ahead of the May 15 GOP primary.

The House's list of anti-"Obamacare" legislation is growing.

In Monday's 55-12, party-line vote, representatives approved a 10-member panel to monitor how Obama's reforms are being adopted in Idaho by agencies like the Department of Health and Welfare, so they don't lose track once the session ends. The measure is up for Senate consideration.

And Rep. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d'Alene, wants Idaho insurers like Blue Cross and Regence Blue Shield to create their own private insurance exchange, rather than bank on cash from the state or federal governments. It would be like the "Travelocity" vacation clearinghouse, he said.

"You can go onto a website, you can shop for airline tickets," Nonini said. "I don't know what's stopping the insurance industry from going out and doing its own exchange."

Democrats counter the private sector hasn't done it, necessitating a "nudge from the federal government."

"The Republicans have no real proposal for reducing the cost of health care or making things easier and more accessible for consumers," said House Minority Caucus Chairman Brian Cronin, D-Boise. "They've simply adopted the 'Party of No' approach."

In rural Idaho, it's apt that some Republicans are using an agricultural metaphor to explain their intentions: If nullification failed to eradicate "Obamacare" from Idaho soil, then they'll just have to kneel to the earth and weed its tender sprouts before they take root in Idaho code — and become impossible to pluck out.

Given U.S. Supreme Court justices likely won't rule on the reforms' constitutionality until June, House Majority Caucus Chairman Ken Roberts, a Donnelly farmer, contends Idaho must undertake everything before then to keep them from thriving here.

"Why spend time and taxpayer dollars setting up a system that we think is unconstitutional and that a majority of Idaho residents don't support?" Roberts said. "It's premature."