Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected health insurance mandates that represent the cornerstone of “ObamaCare,” with two thirds of the electorate voting in favor of a state constitutional amendment prohibiting mandatory participation in any health-care schemes. The ballot initiative was driven forward by a broad coalition including Tea Party groups, conservative activists, and others.
Under the banner of preserving Ohioans’ right to choose their own health care, the measure, known as Issue 3, strictly prohibits mandatory health-care programs. Fines and penalties for refusing to purchase insurance or other health services are also banned.
“No federal, state, or local law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in a health care system,” notes the new amendment, entitled “Preservation of the freedom to choose health care and health care coverage.“
The measure was so popular that despite opposition from major newspapers and politicians, every singleabram county in Ohio voted to support it – even long-time Democratic strongholds. “We saw an overwhelming reaction against forced health care,” explained Ohioans for Healthcare Freedom campaign manager Jeff Longstreth after the vote. “Health care freedom was about giving citizens freedom.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., left, pauses during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, April 8, 2011. (AP)
When the GOP-led House voted in January to repeal President Obama’s health care law, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wouldn’t even take up the measure in his chamber and he scorned Republicans for wasting time on “symbolic votes.”
But after Congress struck a last-minute budget deal Friday night to avert a government shutdown, Reid will have to eat his words.
The deal that funds the government through the end of September and cuts $38.5 billion from current spending levels also guarantees a debate and vote in the Senate on legislation that would repeal the president’s signature on the domestic initiative that Republicans derisively call “Obamacare.”
The deal also requires several studies that will force the Obama administration to disclose the full impact of the law’s mandates, including a study on the cost of premiums; an audit of all the waivers given to businesses and unions that can’t meet the new annual coverage limits; and a report on all of the contractors who have been hired to implement the law and the cost of those contracts to taxpayers.
It’s a bit like a supermarket manager dying of starvation or a bottled-water distributor dying of thirst: In the U.K., a former National Health Service (NHS) director died while waiting for medical care — at her own hospital. The Daily Mail reports:
Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.
But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery.
Her devastated husband, Jim, is now demanding answers from Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust — the organisation where his wife had served as a non-executive member of the board of directors.
He said: “I don’t really know why she died. I did not get a reason from the hospital. We all want to know for closure. She got weaker and weaker as she waited and operations were put off.”
Not to be cruel, but the reason is simple.
It’s called government-run health care.
Read the rest.
Arizona can enact Medicaid enrollment reductions as planned despite a progressive Democrat’s recent request to scrutinize the cuts, the Obama administration’s top health official said Friday.
Last week, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) called on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to closely study the Health and Human Services Department’s endorsement of a plan that would let the cash-strapped Arizona to drop as many as 280,000 people from its Medicaid rolls. The state had been seeking a waiver for a healthcare reform requirement to maintain Medicaid eligibility standards until 2014, but HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius informed the state last month it could allow the cuts without special permission because the program was already operating on a waiver that expires Sept. 30.
The Obama administration got a well-deserved rebuke today from Judge Roger Vinson in the Florida lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare (aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act). Judge Vinson issued a new order in response to a bizarre and obtuse “motion to clarify” that the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed on February 17.
Vinson’s original order on January 31 could not have been clearer: He declared the entire law unconstitutional and specifically said that, because he presumed that officials of the executive branch would adhere to the law as declared by a court, his declaratory judgment striking the law down was the functional equivalent of an injunction. Judge Vinson wrote then that he presumed that the executive branch would follow his order, which any lawyer (including a lawyer President) would know requires them to cease implementing Obamacare with respect to the 26 states that are plaintiffs and the National Federation of Independent Business. That turned out to be a faulty presumption, indeed.
Twenty-one governors representing more than 115 million Americans have written to Kathleen Sebelius asking for more flexibility on health-care reform.
Unless you’re in favor of a fully nationalized health-care system, the president’s health-care reform law is a massive mistake. It will amplify all the big drivers of overconsumption and excessive pricing: “Why not, it’s free?” reimbursement; “The more I do, the more I get” provider payment; and all the defensive medicine the trial bar’s ingenuity can generate.
All claims made for it were false. It will add trillions to the federal deficit. It will lead to a de facto government takeover of health care faster than most people realize, and as millions of Americans are added to the Medicaid rolls and millions more employees (including, watch for this, workers of bankrupt state governments) are dumped into the new exchanges.
Many of us governors are hoping for either a judicial or legislative rescue from this impending disaster, and recent court decisions suggest there’s a chance of that. But we can’t count on a miracle-that’s only permitted in Washington policy making. We have no choice but to prepare for the very real possibility that the law takes effect in 2014.
The legislature is wasting no time fulfilling two of its pledges: saving money on health care and cracking down on illegal immigration.
Among the nearly 1,000 bills introduced in just 20 days, Senator Steve Smith (R-LD23), vice chairman of Sen. Sylvia Allen’s boarder security committee, proposes that hospitals be required to verify citizenship before admitting an individual.
SB 1405 amends Title 36, chapter 4, article 1, Arizona Revised Statutes by adding section 36-415, which reads, in part, “Before a hospital admits a person for non-emergency care, a hospital admissions officer must confirm that the person is a citizen of the United States, a legal resident of the United States or lawfully present in the United States. The admissions officer may use any method prescribed in section 1-501 to verify citizenship or legal status.”
The bill goes on to state that when confronted by people who cannot prove citizenship, the hospital must contact U.S. Immigration officials.
The bill deals with emergencies by stating that care may be provided, but Immigration still must be contacted.
The bill indemnifies hospitals from civil liabilities for compliance.
Bill Text SB 1405 – Introduced Version
Bill Text SB 1407 – Introduced Version
Bill Text SB 1308 – Introduced Version
Bill Text SB 1368 – Introduced Version
Bill Text SB 1383 – Introduced Version
Bill Text SB 1385 – Introduced Version
Bill Text SB 1342 – Introduced Version
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While some people leave their hopes in the hands of unelected, unaccountable, politically-connected lawyers that make up the federal judiciary, lawmakers in eleven states have taken steps to bypass Washington D.C. completely and take matters into their own hands.
The latest? South Dakota. Introduced by Representatives Hubbel, Jensen, Liss, and Nelson (Stace) and Senators Begalkaand Lederman is House Bill 1165 (HB1165), the National Health Care Nullification Act. (h/t Chris Stevens)
It states, in part:
The Legislature find that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590; Pub. L. No. 111-148) as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872; Pub. L. No. 111-152) is not authorized by the United States Constitution and violates the true meaning and intent of the United States Constitution, and further finds that such law is invalid in this state, may not be recognized by this state, is specifically rejected by this state, and is considered null and void and of no effect in this state
A U.S. district judge on Monday threw out the nation’s health care law, declaring it unconstitutional because it violates the Commerce Clause and surely reviving a feud among competing philosophies about the role of government.
Judge Roger Vinson, in Pensacola, Fla., ruled that as a result of the unconstitutionality of the “individual mandate” that requires people to buy insurance, the entire law must be declared void.
“I must reluctantly conclude that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the act with the individual mandate. That is not to say, of course, that Congress is without power to address the problems and inequities in our health care system. The health care market is more than one-sixth of the national economy, and without doubt Congress has the power to reform and
regulate this market. That has not been disputed in this case. The principal dispute
has been about how Congress chose to exercise that power here,” Vinson wrote.
“While the individual mandate was clearly ‘necessary and essential’ to the act as drafted, it is not ‘necessary and essential’ to health care reform in general,” he continued. “Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void.”
Ruling [PDF]
