Christie Herrera of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has a great article in today’s Washington Times on the problem with the “opt-out” illusion offered by Senator Reid. Through Herrera’s efforts with ALEC, 24 states have passed a “Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act” that would truly preserve Americans’ health care choices, unlike the deceptively-named bills in Congress.
From the article:
The Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act accomplishes two goals. First, it preserves the right of patients to pay directly for medical care, which is illegal in some single-payer countries like Canada.
Single-payer horror stories tell us that when the government pays for medical care, bureaucrats make decisions based on the bottom line – resulting in waiting lists and rationing. When patients control health care dollars, they retain the right to decide which doctor to see and what medical treatments to get.
Relevant to the federal debate, however, is the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act’s second provision – that individuals can’t be fined for failing to purchase government-defined insurance.
This strikes at the heart of the individual mandate – a provision in both the House and Senate bills – that the Cato Institute estimates would force 100 million Americans to lose their existing coverage.
This grassroots effort by state legislators is heartening in the face of such monumental federal payoffs to dissenting states (case in point: Nebraska and Louisiana.) It’s good to see that that pesky little sentence at the end of the Bill of Rights about “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution” being “reserved to the states respectively, or the people” means something to so many lawmakers after all.
What’s it called again? Oh right, the 10th Amendment.