Tennessee Will Not Set Up Health Care Exchanges

Welcome to the club

Tennessee will not set up its own health insurance exchange, leaving the task to the federal government and joining a push by Republican governors to deliver at least a symbolic blow to health care reform.

Gov. Bill Haslam told the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Monday that Tennessee will not create the online marketplace where the state's residents will be able to shop for health coverage required by the Affordable Care Act. The governor announced the decision in a lunchtime speech to the Rotary Club of Nashville.

Haslam blamed a lack of specifics from the federal government about how a state exchange would have to be structured.