Missouri bill would gut Obamacare

[Stephanie]

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Friday, December 27, 2013 - A View from the Tenth by Michael Boldin


JEFFERSON CITY, Mo., December 27, 2013 – Next month, the Missouri Senate will consider a bill which would effectively cripple the implementation of the Affordable Care Act within the state.

Following the lead of South Carolina, where lawmakers are fast-tracking House Bill 3101 in 2014, and Georgia, where HB707 was recently introduced by Rep. Jason Spencer, Missouri State Senator John T. Lamping (R-24) pre-filed Senate Bill 546 (SB546) to update the Health Care Freedom Act passed by Missouri voters in 2010. It passed that year with more than 70% support.

SB546 would ban Missouri from taking any action that would “compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system.” That means the state would be banned by law from operating a health care exchange for the federal government.

The bill also proposes suspending the licenses of insurers who accept federal subsidies which result in the “imposition of penalties contrary to the public policy” set forth in the legislation. Since it is unlikely that any insurer would then accept a subsidy, not a single employer in the state could be hit with the employer-mandate penalties those subsidies trigger.

In a press release, Lamping said his goal was make health care better for the people of his state. “These ideas are aimed at improving … health care decisions for Missourians.”

Following significant portions of the Tenth Amendment Center’s four-step plan to nullify Obamacare on a state-level, Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano noted that such actions were not just legal, but effective.

“If enough states do this, it will gut Obamacare because the federal government doesn’t have the resources … to go into each of the states if they start refusing,” he said.

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Missouri bill would gut Obamacare | Washington Times Communities