SWGA Politics

Georgia Health Care Constitutional Amendment

Last week, State Senator Judson Hill (R-Marietta) announced that he had crafted a proposal for a Constitutional Amendment that would protect Georgians from any “public option” health care proposal at the Federal level and that he had the support of the Senate Republican Caucus in this effort.

As always, I try to read the bill before I comment on it. I figure that I can’t ask my Representatives to do something I’m not willing to do myself, and I also like to be informed so that I can then pass the knowledge on to y’all and whoever else asks me any questions.

This morning, Senator Hill sent me the text of the bill, which you can see for yourself here.

There are no calls for “states rights”, “10th Amendment”, “nullification”, or any other such thing in this bill – though the first two were mentioned at a press conference last week, by both Hill and Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock).

As far as commentary on the bill itself goes, Paragraph 2 is the “meat” of the bill (Paragraph 1 is the definitions), and section a) I absolutely love. It basically says that government cannot compel you in any way to participate in any health care system and that government cannot penalize you or your employer if you or your employer choose to pay for health care directly (ie, no insurance company involved in any way). If this bill were just section a), it would whole-heartedly get a “SUPPORT” with a 10 ranking.

There is a “but” here though, and that “but” is sections b) and c). Section b) is extremely subjective and states that “Subject to reasonable and necessary rules and regulations that do not substantially limit a person’s options, the purchase or sale of health insurance in private health care systems shall not be prohibited by law or by rule or regulation.” The specific language I have a problem with here is “”Subject to reasonable and necessary rules and regulations that do not substantially limit a person’s options”. Who gets to decide what “reasonable” and “necessary” rules and regulations are? I’m likely to have very different views on that subject than, say Austin Scott, and he is likely to have very different views on it than DuBose Porter.

Furthermore, who gets to decide what “substantially limit[s] a person’s options”? Some would argue from a variety of angles that a person’s options are already substantially limited. For example, in Albany due to Certificate of Need issues, your ONLY option for using a hospital to deliver your baby is Phoebe. Are my options not already “substantially limited” due to the presence of only one local hospital permitted to provide this service?

This leads into my issues with section c), which basically says this constitutional amendment won’t affect any health care oriented laws we already have on the books here in Georgia. Again, meaning that all those laws we already have that limit health care options in this state, such as certificate of need and others, get to remain unscathed by this constitutional amendment that purports to ensure that our options regarding health care are not limited.

Overall, as of right now I would rate this proposal as a “SUPPORT” with a rating of 8.

For more coverage of this that you may have missed, check out these three posts on Peach Pundit (Erick Erickson, Icarus, and Senator Hill), this one from the AJC’s Gold Dome Live blog (Aaron Gould Sheinin and others), and this one from AJC’s Political Insider blog (Jim Galloway)