Thursday, November 8, 2012

It's not over yet...

In the midst of my avid (and borderline irritating to those around me) use of the internet to get minute-by-minute updates of election results on Tuesday, I noticed that several states were voting on state-level measures that directly contradict the PPACA.  In Alabama, Montana, and Wyoming, the measures passed, and in Florida it narrowly failed (which I'm guessing coincides with the narrow win for Obama).  Here's the wording of a brief description of each bill as described by politico.com:


  • Alabama: Would prohibit any person or employer from being forced to participate in any health care system
  • Florida: Would create an amendment to the state constitution to prohibit laws from requiring a person or employer to purchase health care coverage. (FAILED)
  • Montana: Would prohibit state and federal governments from requiring the purchase of health insurance or imposing any penalty for those who do not.
  • Wyoming: Would reserve health care decisions of residents, allow them to pay for any health care and give the state legislature authority to regulate health care.
I've been looking for some discussion online about the implications of these measures and haven't been able to find much.  The only hint I am seeing is a quote from Jonathan Turley, a law professor at GW Law School, who says that "these laws may promise more than they can deliver... What the laws certainly do is to give state officials more of a basis to go to court and challenge the national health care law." (CNN election coverage, URL: http://m.cnn.com/primary/cnnd_fullarticle?topic=newsarticle&category=cnnd_latest&articleId=urn:newsml:CNN.com:20121106:ballot-initiatives:1&cookieFlag=COOKIE_SET)

I'm hoping to crowdsource more information from our class - do any of you know more about these measures?  Have you seen any reporting or analysis of their impact?

1 comment:

Jessica Foster said...

Interesting, Deb, I didn't know that states were doing this. These laws wouldn't stand very long if they're shown to contradict federal law, would they? Although I suppose the ACA argument all along has been that the law doesn't "force" or "require" anyone to buy insurance (it's not illegal to not have insurance), it just requires people to pay a penalty if they choose not to. So Turley's probably right that they wouldn't have much effect other than in court. I'm curious to see what happens with these!