By Susan Gore, WLG Commentary
At Wyoming Liberty Group’s June Commonsense Sovereignty Meeting, Senator Cale Case noted a pending federal grant of $1.5 million to fund the alignment of Wyoming’s private insurance regulation with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [Obamacare]. Had Wyoming accepted the federal grant, it would have radically altered Wyoming law in that state government would have been given the power to decide whether health insurance rate changes were “unreasonable” or “excessive.” It is well understood that the government program will compete with private insurance while maintaining an easy position from which to slant rules through potential manipulation of the insurance exchanges that the states now must establish.
Government is properly only an umpire in this regard and as such has no ethical role to play in the economy it regulates. Should a baseball umpire join a team and pitch a game, calling the balls from the mound, fans would boo and desert the stands, and we should desert the crooked health economy Congress is attempting to impose on us by the abuse of its power.
The above practices presage elimination of private insurance altogether for Wyoming’s small and vulnerable population. This would pose grave fiscal danger for rural hospitals that depend on income from private insurance to compensate for cut-rate Medicaid reimbursements. It would leave citizens more dependent on a distant bureaucracy destined to run out of funds. Furthermore, accepting any PPACA funds may weaken attempts in the courts to reject PPACA outright. Many meeting attendees including Anthony Bouchard of Wyoming 10A and Ed and Janie White of Wyoming Patriots encouraged calls to the Governor’s Office. These apparently inclined Gov. Freudenthal’s decision to refuse this particular grant, though he acknowledges that more offers are on the way.
PPACA advocate Barb Rae of Casper believes the program may bring “real benefits to Wyoming,” according to the July 2nd edition of the Casper Star Tribune. Ms. Rae is “an unfunded consumer representative” of state employees regulating health insurance, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, who might in fact derive real benefits from government’s foray into the health care economy. Ms. Rae opines on the inevitability of a PPACA takeover, “there’s no turning back”.
We never turned toward nationalized medicine; it is as contrary to liberty as it is to good health. Prospects for the PPACA are in doubt. Congressional socialists are polling poorly against their opponents in national campaigns. A July 5th Rasmussen poll found 60% of voters favor repeal of the hasty bill. PPACA faces a number of U.S. Constitutional challenges. We in Wyoming hope to pass the Health Care Freedom Amendment for our own Constitution as the surest means of winning a U.S. Supreme Court victory over proscribed jail and fines for “willful” refusal to buy a health product that is so bad it takes threats to prod you into paying up.
Tags: Cale Case, Commonsense Sovereignty, Obamacare, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act