Health Insurance Exchange Politics Play Out on Mini-Cassia Billboards [The Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho]

Nov. 10--BURLEY -- Billboards are popping up in Mini-Cassia exclaiming, "They didn't need to implement ObamaCare."

"They," whose names are listed on the billboards are District 27 legislators, Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, and Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley.

Two of the three billboards are at Main Street and Hiland Avenue in Burley and on Idaho Highway 24 between Rupert and Heyburn. A third is in Mountain Home and calls out Rep. Rich Wills, R-Glenns Ferry, and Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson.

More billboards are planned. The signs were put up by the Idaho Freedom Foundation in a lobbying campaign to repeal the state insurance exchange in 2014, said Wayne Hoffman, foundation president.

"I'm disappointed from a couple of standpoints," said Cameron, a Rupert insurance and investment broker. "Clearly, the Idaho Freedom Foundation is engaging in campaigning and that's against their non-profit charter. And the information on the billboard is misleading and not factual."

Hoffman said in a telephone interview with the Times-News that IFF is a non-partisan, educational research institute and government watchdog dedicated to improving the lives of Idaho residents.

"We put those up because the legislators made a huge error," Hoffman said. "And they have a chance to correct that error next year."

All the names of legislators who voted for the state insurance exchange will not make their way onto a billboard because there is "not enough room" on a billboard, Hoffman wrote in an email to the Times-News.

The Mini-Cassia sites were picked because of cost and availability, he wrote.

Due to the foundation's tax-exempt status, it is barred from engaging in campaigning.

Cameron said the foundation is "targeting" him and Wood because they proposed the state insurance exchange bill two years ago.

Wood was unavailable for comment on Friday, but he told Betsy Russell in an Oct. 29 Spokesman Review article that he views the Burley billboard, located about one block from the hospital where he practices medicine, as an "effort to try to gin up a political opponent" for him in May's GOP primary.

"I think that's what it's designed to do, to be very blunt about it," Wood said. "It's political advertising."

The billboards are targeting Speaker Bedke because they want to unseat him, Cameron told the Times-News. "It's hard-ball, high-stakes politics and it goes clear back to the previous election," Cameron said.

Bedke was out of the area Friday and did not return phone calls.

"What are they saying? That we're not allowed to talk about their voting record?" Hoffman said.

Hoffman said the intention of the foundation is "to move public policy," not to engage in political campaigning.

The billboards were put up in October when none of the parties listed were running for any office, he said.

The foundation's intentions are threefold, Hoffman said, to tell people that the legislator's didn't have to pass "ObamaCare," identify the legislators who voted for the state health insurance exchange and inform people that there will be a chance to repeal it next year.

Hoffman said the legislators who voted for the insurance exchange were "assisting in the implementation of the President's ObamaCare."

Cameron said the state was faced with a choice of either trying to keep some local control by setting up the state insurance exchange or having a federal government exchange, with loss of control.

"There were still plenty of avenues, including legal avenues they could have pursued," Hoffman said.

Hoffman cited the lawsuit filed by Oklahoma's attorney general against ObamaCare as an example.

Cameron said the state's Attorney General is still looking into the state's legal options.

"Even if we would have sued, we'd still have an insurance exchange in Idaho," Cameron said. The exchange just would have been under federal control.

Differences between the federal and state exchange sites are the state site is cheaper and paid navigators like Planned Parenthood and executives from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) assist the insurance customers on the federal site.

Cameron said the state site still has assisting organizations to help customers, but they are ones Idaho chose like the public health districts. The state also requires background checks on all assisting persons who have access to customers' personal information, he said.

Cameron said Hoffman's group and others will likely introduce bills to repeal the state exchange during the next legislative session.

"I would be shocked if that bill gains any traction," Cameron said.

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