Friday,  June 29, 2012 • Vol. 12--No. 351 • 14 of 29 •  Other Editions

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preme Court decision and "make an informed decision that minimizes the damage this law could do to South Dakota's health care and insurance industries."
• Daugaard has long opposed the law, which requires most people to have health insurance or pay a penalty. The governor argues that decisions on health insurance and Medicaid coverage for low-income people should be left to the states.
• Obama's health care overhaul also requires each state to create a health insurance exchange, an online marketplace for patients and small businesses to shop for insurance policies. Under the law, states are required to submit plans for the exchanges this fall.
• Daugaard has delayed creating South Dakota's exchange, saying that if the state is forced to set one up, federal officials must give it more time to do so.

• About 105,000 people in South Dakota, or about 13 percent of the state's population, didn't have health insurance in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But based on state officials' own survey, they believe the number of uninsured is 71,000, or about 9 percent.
• The federal law seeks to reduce the number of people without insurance by requiring people to get insurance and by expanding Medicaid, the program that pays medical expenses for poor people with a mix of federal and state money.
• Daugaard has been particularly troubled by the provision that would require states to expand Medicaid to cover people with higher incomes. The Supreme Court found problems with the federal law's expansion of Medicaid, but said the expansion could proceed as long as the federal government does not threaten to withhold state's entire Medicaid allotment if they don't take part in the law's expansion.
• The governor said South Dakota will make no decision on expanding Medicaid until officials study the Supreme Court ruling in more detail.
• South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley said the Supreme Court ruled the federal government could not withhold all of South Dakota's existing federal Medicaid money, more than $600 million a year, if the state fails to expand coverage under the program. But the court also did not say what level of lesser financial penalty might be acceptable, so Congress or federal agencies will have to decide that, he said.
• Once that penalty is known, the governor and the Legislature can decide whether to comply with the law's requirements, Jackley said.
• "I don't agree that the Legislature and the state will necessarily have to implement Obamacare. The question is what is that exposure (to a financial penalty) if they don't. That's the burning question that this opinion does not answer," Jackley

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