Lt. Governor Peter Kinder, a Republican, blasted President Obama's Affordable Care Act Monday, just over one week before Missouri's federally-run health insurance exchange is scheduled to open for business.
Kinder told reporters during a conference call that he hopes Missouri residents without health coverage will opt not to use the exchange.
"This law prescribes a one-size-fits-all plan for all of us," Kinder said. "I would hope there would be a lot of active resistance to the implementation of this law, and would say that there needs to be, so if you can, yes, resist signing up."
Kinder told reporters that the Affordable Care Act counts on "dumping hundreds of thousands of people into a failing Medicaid system."
"This is blatantly causing layoffs, it is causing people to lose retirement coverage that they had,” Kinder said. “It's causing people to not get hired in the first place.”
Kinder filed a lawsuit seeking to block the federal law's implementation in Missouri, but a federal appeals court last year tossed it out, citing that Kinder had no legal standing to file suit.