The Idaho Freedom Foundation Thursday responded to a news release claiming that Idaho businesses are "getting behind a proposal to create a private version of a health insurance exchange instead of a state-run or quasi-governmental one."

Idaho Freedom Foundation Executive Director Wayne Hoffman, a member of the governor's health insurance exchange task force, said it is incorrect to suggest, as backers of the plan have, that a state-created nonprofit to run the exchange would be a "free market
solution."

"There is no such thing as a free market government-created entity charged with carrying out federal and state law," Hoffman said. "Further, creating a new nonprofit entity is a trendy way for the state and federal government to avoid taking responsibility when the health insurance exchange that they've created raises costs or outright fails."

The state-created entity would have the legal ability to set and enforce fees used to fund the health insurance exchange. Under federal law, health insurance exchanges must be financially self-sufficient by 2015.

"If Idaho wants to make sure businesses and consumers are trapped in a bureaucratic maze for which there is no way out and no accountability, a state-created non-profit administering a dysfunctional federal health care law is a good way to get there," Hoffman said.

"Most of the business leaders I speak to know that there is no upside to the state creating a health insurance exchange and want Idaho policymakers to continue the fight against the federal government's takeover of the health care industry," Hoffman added.