Colorado House Leader Opposes Obamacare, Endorses Exchanges

Even though Colorado House Majority Leader Amy Stephens opposed Obamacare, the federal health reform law passed last year, she’s backing health insurance exchanges.

Stephens is co-sponsoring a bill to allow Colorado to join other states in opting out of the law, as well as another bill to set up the exchanges, one of the key tenets of the reform law, the Denver Post reported Wednesday.

The exchanges are marketplaces where individuals and small businesses can shop for insurance.

"I think you have to explore the exchange issue on its own," Stephens told the newspaper. "I've always been intrigued by the exchange idea and how it might help small business."

Some are calling the exchanges a bad idea. John Graham, healthcare studies director at the Pacific Research Institute, a California-based free-market think tank, said they’re a "lose-lose bet."

"If Obamacare persists, exchanges will become bloated administrative nightmares," Graham wrote in a column this month. "If Obamacare is defeated, states will have wasted time and energy that should have been directed toward that effort. Obamacare is President Obama's problem."