An online marketplace without any competition would seem like a pretty silly idea but that will apparently be the reality in New Hampshire. The only choice for people using the new exchange in New Hampshire will be Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Hampshire. It was the only company that applied.

In a move that should surprise no one, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) officially wrote the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to inform them Arizona will not set up its own health care exchange. This means the federal government will instead need to set up an exchange in the state.

Arizona is just the latest in a long line of states to officially decide to leave the management of their exchanges up to the federal government. Frankly, I consider this a positive development.

The government of Vermont continues to chug along with their multi-year plan to establish a universal health care system modeled on single payer. The most recent step is that the two chambers of the legislature have approved a new bill creating the health care exchange required by the Affordable Care Act and to require everyone to purchase insurance through the Exchange.

To bring New York into compliance with the Affordable Care Act, Governor Andrew Cuomo had to create the new exchange in his state through executive order.

Private health insurance in American is extremely inefficient and more costly that public insurance. A single public program directly and collectively bargaining with providers for thousands of individuals is going to get a much better deal than one low-income individual with no market power and limited knowledge buying a product from a middleman.

The subsidized private health insurance exchanges created by the new health care law are going to do a very poor job of providing affordable health care to the low income Americans they are meant to serve, according to a new draft report to the Connecticut General Assembly from the Sustinet Health Partnership Board of Directors.

Barack Obama now can officially be known as the president who did the most damage to a woman’s right to choose… even if the AP thinks it is ‘obscure.’

Ezra Klein has a new, strange, and incorrect defense of the individual mandate in the Senate bill. The argument simply does not fit with the language in the bill, and is pure nonsense. Progressives need to use their leverage for better reforms down the road, laying a strategy for “fixing it later.”

Ezra Klein wrote that he is fairly pessimistic on the effectiveness of the new health insurance exchanges. He should be–but not for the reasons he outlined. (As I have noted, health insurance marketplaces do a poor job reducing cost and need very strong risk adjustment mechanism.) Klein states: In the House health-care reform plan, the [...]

A lot has been made of the fact that the new health insurance exchange would only be open to a small subsection of the population which is uninsured or works for a small business. The new public option will only be available to people on the new exchange. As a result, most people would be [...]