Huffington Post
September 3, 2010

...In the current health reform law, I included a provision that would allow states to gain an exemption from certain federal requirements -- such as the individual mandate, the employer penalty and the exact standards for designing the exchanges, subsidies and basic health insurance policies -- if they could find a way to do a better job of covering their state's citizens. And I have been working to help states, like my home state of Oregon, take advantage of this option and hopefully move-up the date when states can start applying for waivers. The reason for this -- as the legislators in my state will attest -- is that it's a lot less cost effective for states to implement their own approaches in 2017 if they also have to pay to implement the federally mandated approach in 2014... Read in Full