The board overseeing Idaho's health insurance exchange plans a 3-hour, 40-minute meeting behind a downtown Boise law office's closed doors where citizens will be barred Thursday nearly twice as long as a public meeting scheduled later that day.

Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter said Tuesday a state-built health insurance exchange is the best option for Idaho under the federal government's health care overhaul, but left the final decision up to lawmakers who return to Boise in January.

The Idaho Capitol was part medical clinic, part reality TV show and all cultural battlefield on Wednesday, as an anti-abortion advocate secured a basement meeting room to conduct live ultrasound procedures on six women before a mostly female audience of 150.

Republican lawmakers in a handful of states are opening another front in the war against President Obama's health care overhaul, seizing on the hot-button issue of birth control with bills that would allow insurance companies to ignore new federal rules requiring them to cover contraception.

Idaho received a $20.4 million federal grant for an insurance exchange required by the federal health care overhaul, setting up a fight in the upcoming 2012 Legislature over whether the state should keep the money.

Idaho was set to accept as much as $19 million in federal cash linked to the health care overhaul as state agencies take advantage of waiver provisions that help them skirt Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's executive order aimed at blocking them from taking some of the money.

Idaho's new, problem-plagued Medicaid claims processing system may cost taxpayers millions of dollars, according to a report released Tuesday by legislative auditors who concluded that neither Idaho health officials, the software company nor Medicaid providers were adequately prepared for the switch last year.