Health Care Reform...

Arizona is on the right track on this. Republican Arizona Rep. Nancy Barto, chair of the House Health and Human Service Committee, has authored a bill, HCR2014, “The Healthcare Freedom Act, which will be placed on the Nov. 10 ballot in Arizona as a referendum.

If voters approve it, “The Healthcare Freedom Act” would, among other things, forbid any law that compels anyone “to participate in any health care system.” It would also allow patients to pay directly for health care services, and for doctors to receive such payments. (Such “topping off” is forbidden in some single-payer systems.) The amendment would also state that health insurance purchases could not be prohibited.

The amendment, then, nails a stake through the heart of two essential elements of a universal, single-payer system: Everybody in the system, and nobody outside the system. It also effectively forbids a Hawaii-style play-or-pay mandate on employers or a Massachusetts-style requirement that individuals obtain coverage. In a press release, Barto claimed that the act would “prevent citizens from being compelled to join a government-run health care system” and “guarantee the right to purchase private health insurance.”

During this last session, Sen. David Hann, R-Eden Prairie sponsored S.F.1281 and S.F. 325, while Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, was the lead sponsor of H.F. 171, which would, among other things, forbid any law that “restricts a person’s freedom of choice of private health care systems or private health plans.” None of these plans made it out of committee but there is an interest in Minnesota to protect states rights and keep federalism from becoming total socialism.

I commend these two legislators for their courage to stand up and speak for what is right. This is the right track for our state now and in the future. This federal government purple gorilla is growing larger and becoming more invasive in the rights of individual states and our individual freedoms. If we allow the federal government to completely take over governing our every act, why in the world would we even have separate states?

The trampling of our rights to govern ourselves at the state level and our individual rights and freedoms as citizens of this free nation can only be likened to the forming of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics.

Those in power would have you believe that everyone deserves to have a home, a car, health care, but the simple fact is that in a free world, you deserve what you are willing to work for and that is it. Nothing is free and those willing sit around and do nothing, should get nothing.

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” If you are comfortable with these words of Karl Marx, then God help our democracy because he also said “ Democracy is the road to socialism.”