OUR VIEW: Caldara takes on health care reform (with poll)

Citizen activist Jon Caldara is at it again, crusading to protect us from excessive government meddling in our lives. Let’s hope he succeeds more than ever in 2010, as the federal government likely embarks upon forcing health care reform on the masses in order to ensure equal access for all.

Caldara and the Independence Institute, a public policy organization Caldara heads in Golden, is devising a proposed new constitutional amendment that would need 76,047 signatures to make the Nov. 2010 ballot. The measure would attempt to stop the federal government from forcing health insurance on Coloradans.

If voters succeed at amending the Colorado Constitution, we’ll find out whether it can prevent federal authorities from telling Coloradans how to live. It will almost certainly be determined by the courts, in what stands to become a states’ rights battle of involving Colorado or one of the other states gearing up for a fight against national health care reform.

Caldara wants a law that would forbid state or federal government from requiring Coloradans to buy health insurance. He also wants state law to uphold the rights of Colorado residents to pay cash for health care services, and to buy health insurance plans from other states in order to enhance their options and generate competitive pricing.

Caldara understands the dangers of a system that doesn’t give citizens choices in paying for health care, because he has met and interviewed Canadians who travel to the United States to save their lives. The Canadian government has long forbidden most health care providers from accepting out-of-pocket payment for services, trying to prevent a two-tiered system in which the wealthy jump to the front of waiting lines. As a result, people willing to pay for immediate life-saving care typically travel to the United States.

The Canadian system has enforced equal access for all Canadians, which has resulted in rationing and years-long waiting lists for critical medical services. The government promises financial “coverage” for all who need health care, but coverage isn’t the same as care.

Throughout this country’s history, the courts have given us confusing precedence regarding the rights of state governments to protect citizens from federal authority. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that state laws can’t protect fetuses from most abortions, restricting states’ rights on a basis of privacy concerns. Next summer, the Supreme Court will decide whether the Second Amendment prohibits state and local governments from imposing strict gun laws on citizens, and most legal pundits predict the court will rule in favor of individuals and their gun rights. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court declared that state law could not establish separate schools for blacks and whites, guaranteeing individuals more school options and upholding the legal concept known as freedom of association.

(Please vote in poll to the right. Must vote to see results. Thanks!)

Any federal legislation designed to ensure equal access to health care, no matter how it is pitched, must dictate how health care is paid for and consumed. That’s why Canada has tried to forbid private payments for health care. If Colorado voters pass a law in 2010, upholding rights of individuals, the courts will likely examine precedence pertaining to freedom of association, in which federal courts have determined that individuals get to decide which organizations to join and who they will and will not interact with and contract with. Freedom of Association is mostly derived from First Amendment interpretations that resulted from efforts by state governments to keep blacks from organizing in the 1950s and ’60s.

While health care reform has no nexus to our country’s racial conflicts, it has a direct nexus to freedom of association. Caldara’s agenda promotes freedom of association by protecting the rights of individuals to associate with the health insurers and providers of their choosing. It also defends the individual’s right to associate with no health care organizations at all. We have no freedom of association if we have no freedom from association.

Whatever health care bill the House and Senate commingle, the president will assuredly sign. It is likely to reduce our options, rather than enhance them. If that’s the case, let’s hope Colorado law has the authority to free us from forced associations and limited options. — Wayne Laugesen, editorial page editor, for the editorial board.

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