States' Rights

The 2010 election was a tidal wave that swept the Republican Party into power. I'm not talking about at the federal level (though the U.S. House elections could be described similarly), I'm talking about state-level elections. Take a look at where things stand at the state level now, in the wake of the 2010 elections:

Governors



State legislatures



And to condense that information into a single map I've put together myself (instead of stealing it from NCSL) with some shading to indicate the degree of Republican control over the levers of state power:



So now we've got an interesting situation. The Republican Party is typically--particularly during the 2010 election cycle--considered to be a conservative party. That often manifests itself as a declaration that the size of the federal government ought to be reduced and its powers and responsibilities pared down. "Let the states run their own affairs!" some of them exclaim. Their bias, rhetorically at least, is to leave governmental functions to state governments unless it's absolutely necessary for the federal government to assume them.

That party is now in a position of tremendous power in state governments across the nation (a reality that traditionally blueish states like Wisconsin are just waking up to now, apparently). So one might expect some of the Republican standby policy suggestions to be implemented in at least some states. Taking health care as an example, the national Republican party often likes to push suggestions such as insurance market deregulation, tort reform, and across-state-lines health insurance purchasing.

Good news for them: all of these things can be done at the state level. To take a Republican favorite: any state may allow out-of-state insurance policies to be sold in its insurance market. That would bring the insurer competition to the state's market that Republicans claim to desire and it doesn't require any federal action. So I perused the websites of the state legislatures of the red-tinted states to see what kind of action is happening on this front now that Republicans have such a prominent role in the nation's state-level politics.

As near as I can tell, interstate purchasing bills have been introduced in the legislatures of only six states (and of them, only the bill in Missouri seems to have actually made it as far as having a committee hearing thus far):

State	Legislation
Arizona	SB1593
Indiana	HB1063
Maine	LD226
Missouri	HB 262 Foreign Health Insurance Purchase Act
Montana	HB445 Allow health care choice thru out-of-state policies
New Hampshire	SB150

A bit of an anemic showing given the alleged Republican affection for this idea. Perhaps the Party of the Tenth Amendment is waiting for action at the federal level? Time will tell.

But the fact remains that the Republicans now hold power in quite a few states and they supposedly have a philosophical predilection toward letting states handle most kinds of policy reforms, leaving the federal government out of it. It will be fascinating to see how much of their erstwhile national agenda (e.g. the federalization of tort law or federal laws allowing interstate insurance purchasing) they push in the states. My guess is that it won't be quite as much as one might expect.