State legislators decry health care reform as anti-states' rights

July 1, 11:02 AMAtlanta Public Policy ExaminerPerry Goodfriend

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Reforming our national health care system would be "anti-competitive and oppressive to states’ rights," according to a statement released from the Georgia State Senate last week.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington,
Wednesday, June 24, 2009, regarding health care
reform. That same day, a group of state legislators
resolved to fight a national health care plan.
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

State Sen. Judson Hill (R-Marietta/Sandy Springs) said, in the statement, that any national public health care plan "will squeeze out private insurance and put us on the road to single-payer health care.” Any government effort to hold insurance premiums low, he said, "will result in millions dropping their private coverage and getting on the federal health care dole. Having the public plan now will mean socialized medicine later.”

Hill, the vice-chair of the Republican caucus in the state senate, was speaking in support of a resolution passed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group of legislators from around the country who believe in the free market, states' rights and federalist principles.

Among the complaints in the ALEC resolution:

• "A federal exchange would undermine states’ oversight role in health insurance and cause a substantial shift in the regulation of the health insurance market from the states to the federal government;"
• "The creation of a new federal system of regulation for health insurance would be inefficient, unnecessary, not cost-effective, and an additional burden on the health care delivery system;" and
• "A new public plan would not improve competition, but would result in an uneven playing field that would shift costs to the private sector and undermine private plans."

The resolution goes on to urge Congress, on behalf of state legislatures, "not to institute new federal review, oversight, or preemption of state health insurance laws; not to create a federal health insurance exchange or connector; and not to create a federal health insurance plan (public plan) option."

 But President Obama claimed, in a Tuesday speech, that the federal plan is designed to help the states and business. "Right now," he told the National Finance Committee of the DNC, "businesses are being crushed by the cost of health care.  Right now our government is going bankrupt at the state and federal level because of health care."

"We know that if we start applying common-sense rules to raise quality and reduce costs," the president concluded, "that we can have a health care system that is uniquely American but finally provides coverage for all and is sustainable for the long term."