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Explaining Colorado Amendment 63: Right to Health Care Choice

Barring unforeseen obstacles, The Colorado Right to Health Care Choice Initiative (Colorado Amendment 63) will be among the ballot measures Colorado voters can vote on in this November’s election –  in addition to others in Colorado politics. Some people are bound to misunderstand what the amendment would do, and not do, as Representative Diana DeGette illustrated with her statement last week.

For a better understanding, I recommend first reading the the text of Colorado Right to Health Care Choice initiative (less than 300 words).

Then I recommend listening to Independence Institute’s Director of Operations Mike Krause and II President Jon Caldara discuss the Colorado Right to Health Care Choice Initiative.  Listen to the podcast:

I’ve transcribed a key segment (2:47):

Jon Caldara:

If this initiative passes, our state Constitution, our founding document, will be amended to say that we, the people of Colorado have a right to health care choice. And particularly it says that the state of Colorado, either on its own or by force of the federal government, cannot force people into a public or private health care plan or insurance scheme.

Furthermore it protects the ability for people to pay directly for legal health care services if in fact the provider wants to do that. And the reason is we don’t want to become like Canada where in most provinces you cannot pay a doctor in cash. You can’t see somebody and pay them cash if that’s what you want to do.  In essence, it’s my goal to make Colorado a sanctuary state for quality health care.

Mike Krause:

Let’s go back to the first part – the fact that the state of Colorado won’t be able to force citizens to purchase a public or private health care product. This doesn’t mean that your citizens amendment would block ObamaCare [or] override ObamaCare, the mandate, the federal mandate. What we’re talking about is what we can do in the state.

Jon Caldara:

Exactly … it certainly sets up a good legal 10th Amendment challenge to the mandate, and only the mandate part, of ObamCare. And therefore we have more ammunition when it comes to protecting our 10th Amendment rights. This will certainly go up to the courts. Even now Attorney General John Suthers and nearly twenty of his compatriots are suing … the federal government.

If they are successful, and I expect they will be, this Amendment becomes absolutely crucial in Colorado. And the reason is if they find out that the feds cannot mandate to buy health insurance at the levels that they want and buy the companies they want and by the size they want, the federal government will do what the federal government always does: put pressure on the states, withhold money, and make the states do their bidding as their servants. Should this amendment become constitutional law, then the state of Colorado can’t do the federal government’s bidding.

I’d add that even if the Attorney Generals’ lawsuit does not succeed, state-level initiatives against parts or all of HR 3590 (”ObamaCare”) have political value, as discussed in this St. Louis Today article.