Posted on 05/05/2010 7:05:15 AM PDT by Badabing Badablonde
OKLAHOMA CITY — A measure allowing the Legislature to sue the federal government over recently enacted health-care reform is headed to Gov. Brad Henry’s desk.
The Oklahoma Senate on Tuesday approved House Joint Resolution 1054, which is designed to allow citizens to opt out of federal health-care reform.
“It would prevent the federal government from forcing any Oklahoman to participate in any health-care system,” said Sen. Randy Brogdon, R-Owasso, who is running for governor. “It would also prohibit the federal government from dictating how doctors choose to care for their patients.
“Finally, the measure authorizes the leaders of the Legislature to hire outside counsel to represent Oklahoma in a lawsuit to prevent ‘Obamacare’ from being forced on our state.”
Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, a Democrat who is running for governor, reviewed the federal law and said a lawsuit would likely fail and would waste resources.
Brogdon, a Senate author of the bill, said the Goldwater Institute has offered to represent the state at no cost. Rep. Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow, is a House author of the bill.
Sen. Richard Lerblance, D-Hartshorne, said federal law is the supreme law of the land and supersedes state law. He said the state recently passed lawsuit reform to deal with frivolous lawsuits but that there is no evidence that it has reduced the cost of health care or resulted in health insurance for more Oklahomans.
“Mark my words: People will be out on a limb to pay to prosecute this frivolous lawsuit,” Lerblance said.
Sen. Judy Eason McIntyre, D-Tulsa, called the measure a “very, very, bad, bad bill.”
“It does nothing but to incite the people,” she said. She said lawmakers have the opportunity to do something other than “use this hot-button issue to garner political support.”
Brogdon said federal health-care reform creates socialized medicine and destroys the free market. He said he is trying to protect the state’s sovereignty. The measure passed by a vote of 25-17.
VFW May 2010 edition, not on line I copied this from the mag.
Burried on page 333 of a 2,400 page document were four lines of text that only recognized Tricare for Life and veterans’ health care programs under Chapter 17, Title 38 as being accepted as minimum essential coverage under the new law. No specific language to protect other Tricare programs or other Title 38 recipients-dependents, widows or children-could be found.
snip
VFW is now working with members of Congress from both parties to submit amendments or legislation to fix the new national health care law. VFW applauds the corrective actions taken by Skelton as well as those of Reps. Steve Buyers (R-Ind) and Buch McKeon (R-Cal), and Sens. Daniel Akala (D-Hawaii), Richard Burr (R-N.C. and Jim Webb (D-VA).
Lets do it....
Federal law can't supercede state law if the federal law is unconstitutional.
Somehow, I bet they’ll be a lot fewer Rats in Oklahoma government after this November, now that they’ve been smoked out as die-hard Obamunists.
Just for memory’s sake -
OK was the only state that had NO counties that went for 0bama.
Love those cowboys!!!
It's always a waste of resources for them when it's about fighting totalitarian overreach. Then as soon as that issue's over, it's back to inventing new entitlements and new vested constituencies and their story is "Resources? It's for the chilllrun! Do you hate chillllrun? Do you think resources are more important than chillllllllllrun?"
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