Bill requiring lawmakers to use state insurance exchange fizzles
SACRAMENTO -- A measure that would have required lawmakers to use the state’s insurance exchange to get their healthcare benefits failed in an Assembly committee Friday.
Assemblyman Brian Nestande (R-Palm Desert) introduced the bill last October, coinciding with the launch of Covered California, the insurance marketplace created under President Obama’s landmark healthcare overhaul.
Nestande proposed that lawmakers who wanted to receive health benefits through the Legislature enroll through the exchange. The plan would make legislators more responsive to issues that users may have with the exchange’s website or other enrollment concerns, Nestande said at the time.
The measure, AB 1246, failed in the Assembly Rules Committee by a party-line vote: seven Democrats on the panel opposed the plan, and four Republicans supported it.
“I am disappointed that more of my Democratic colleagues did not support this effort,” Nestande said in a statement. “I believe as legislators we should be held to the same standards of those who put us in office.”
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