FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 23, 2010

Opsommer introduces bill to regulate stateinsurance exchanges under national health care

State Representative Paul Opsommer announced today the introduction of HB 6075,which he said was a necessary step to regulate abortion coverage under national healthcare if theCox lawsuit is not successful."I do not trust a temporary executive order to make sure we're not using taxpayer moneyto perform abortions", said Opsommer. "Despite the healthcare bill being over two-thousandpages long, most of the details are going to be created by bureaucratic rules created by Secretaryof Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and while we wait for the Cox lawsuit to beheard we must also have people take an active voice in trying to influence that rulemakingprocess."Opsommer said he introduced an important placeholder bill to address the issue at a statelevel, HB 6075. "If the federal government is ultimately successful in mandating that we set upstate insurance exchanges, we have to make sure no taxpayer money is going to be used to fundabortion coverage," said Opsommer. "Ultimately I expect we are going to need several bills inthis area to completely nail this down, it is going to be quite complex. Hopefully with the Coxlawsuit none of these will be needed."