California has embraced the Affordable Care Act - most notably by starting to build a Health Benefit Exchange. That would serve as a marketplace to help match people with health insurance plans. Diana Dooley is California Secretary of Health and Human Services. She says the state is using federal money for the Exchange:
Dooley: "My agenda is to use as much of that as possible, as quickly as possible, to be sure that California has a marketplace, even if we don't have the full promise of the ACA - The Affordable Care Act."
Dooley says she believes there would be a market for the
Exchange, even if the court strikes down the provision in the
federal law that requires everyone to have health insurance.
She says a more critical issue would be the lack of federal money
for subsidies to help people afford to buy insurance on the private
market.
