Benemax

As predicted here, the passage of Health Care Reform legislation in March marked the beginning, not the end, of the health care debate in The United States.

Twenty-one states have now filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the law, and legislation has been introduced or is about to be introduced in 41 states that seeks to exempt those states and their residents from various provisions of the new law.

States’ efforts go back to 2006, when Dr. Eric Novack, an orthopedic surgeon based in Phoenix, realized that some form of national healthcare legislation was a possibility.

Novack worked with conservative groups to craft what is now called the Healthcare Freedom Act.

“The idea is that healthcare decision-making ultimately should be made by patients and families, not from someplace else,” Novack tells Newsmax.

The act provides that, if a healthcare service is legal, “You should always be able to spend your own money to get access to it,” Novack says. “No bureaucrat, public or private, should be able to take that right away from you.”

To whatever extent Health Care Reform infinges on this right, it would seem to run smack up against the “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” promise made in the Declaration of Independence.
In addition, “You should always have the choice not to participate in any healthcare system or plan without a penalty,” says Novack, who heads Arizonans for Healthcare Freedom. “In other words, no mandates of any kind…”

Already, Utah, Idaho, and Virginia have passed some aspect of legislation undercutting the national healthcare law and a constitutional amendment is on the ballot in Arizona this November.