Missouri

“Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama’s administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.”  The referendum passed easily by a 3-to-1 margin, with nearly 73 percent of the vote.

On Monday, a federal judge let Virginia’s attorney general challenge ObamaCare as unconstitutional, refusing to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its mandate to buy health insurance. The Obama Administration says it can force people to buy insurance or other products under the federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce, and punish them with tax and other penalties if they do not. Under Obama’s logic, every American could be forced to buy a car in order to spur interstate commerce in automobiles. The judge was skeptical of this logic, noting that “never before has the Commerce Clause . . . been extended this far,” and “no reported case” has ever “extended the Commerce Clause or Tax Clause” to punish “a person’s decision not to purchase a product.”

Obama’s health care law will reduce lifesaving medical innovation, raise taxes, drive up insurance premiums, break many campaign promises, and increase state budget deficits.  It  will jeopardize the quality of medical care, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level.  It ignores advice from doctors and federal experts, and lessons from countries with universal health care, about how to keep costs down.

It imposes many middle-class tax increases, such as taxes on uninsured individuals, on cosmetic surgery, on medical devices, and on certain health care plans.  It also increases taxes on many investors and imposes marriage penalties.

It also contains many penny-wise, pound-foolish provisions.  It spends money on frills like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia.

The health care legislation also contains potentially unconstitutional racial preferences for minority applicants, and lower standards for treatment of patients in predominantly-minority institutions.  These drew criticism from the Civil Rights Commission.