Florida Republicans Go After Mandates

Back at the end of last month I noted Arizona Republicans were trying to put a ballot initiative forth in 2010 that that would exempt the state from any federal health care mandates under the auspices of the Tenth Amendment, effectively removing the state from federal health care programs that required a mandate. Now, news that Florida Republicans are considering the same measure for the Sunshine State and its four million uninsured.

Earlier this week, Florida State Senator Carey Baker (R) and State Representative Scott Plakon (R) introduced a state Constitutional amendment that, if adopted, would prevent Floridians from enrolling in any federal health care plan. The language of House Joint Resolution 37 states:

To preserve the freedom of all residents of the state to provide for their own health care:

A law or rule shall not compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system.

“We believe this unprecedented power-grab by President Obama and Congress is clearly not in the best interests of the citizens of Florida,” Baker and Plakon said in a joint statement. Baker, who is a Republican candidate for Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, participated in the right-wing tea parties on July 4. Both he and Plakon are sponsors of a “sovereignty” memorial, a measure meant to serve “as a notice and a demand to the Federal Government…to cease and desist, effective immediately, from issuing mandates that are beyond the scope of [their] constitutionally delegated powers.”

Which is funny. Pray tell, would Medicare or Medicaid fall under this measure there, guys? What's going to happen to states that do this? Will they be cut off from federal health care funds? Can you imagine that happening in a state like Florida, with millions of retirees on Medicare and millions more getting some benefit from Medicaid?

State Republicans are trying to exempt their states from any health care reform with any mandates in it whatsoever for consumers or providers, assuring the programs fail. Smugly, they figure that federal officials would never dare to react with punitive action, basically using voters as human shields against health care reform legislation.

Nice bunch of guys, so very much against government health care in a state where maybe 1 in 4 people are on...government health care. That'll help them in the polls, certainly.