Mizzou Tells Obamacare to Take a Hike... Proposition C Passes with more than 70% of the Vote

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Prop C passes overwhelmingly

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BY TONY MESSENGER • tmessenger@post-dispatch.com > 573-635-6178 | Posted: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 8:30 am | (341) Comments

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Sid Hastings 3 AUG. 2010 -- TOWN & COUNTRY, Mo. -- Supporters of Missouri Proposition C cheer as results are announced on election night during a celebration of the measure's passage at the home of Pat and Margaret Walker in Town & Country Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010. Cunningham and other members of the state legislature placed the proposition on the August primary ballot, which would block federal efforts to have all citizens buy health insurance. Photo by Sid Hastings

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ST. LOUIS • Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama's administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.
"The citizens of the Show-Me State don't want Washington involved in their health care decisions," said Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, one of the sponsors of the legislation that put Proposition C on the August ballot. She credited a grass-roots campaign involving Tea Party and patriot groups with building support for the anti-Washington proposition.
With most of the vote counted, Proposition C was winning by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1. The measure, which seeks to exempt Missouri from the insurance mandate in the new health care law, includes a provision that would change how insurance companies that go out of business in Missouri liquidate their assets.
"I've never seen anything like it," Cunningham said at a campaign gathering at a private home in Town and Country. "Citizens wanted their voices to be heard."
About 30 Proposition C supporters whooped it up loudly at 9 p.m. when the returns flashed on the television showing the measure passing with more than 70 percent of the vote.
"It's the vote heard 'round the world," said Dwight Janson, 53, from Glendale, clad in an American flag-patterned shirt. Janson said he went to one of the first Tea Party gatherings last year and hopped on the Proposition C bandwagon because he wanted to make a difference.
"I was tired of sitting on the sidelines bouncing my gums," he said.
Missouri was the first of four states to seek to opt out of the insurance purchase mandate portion of the health care law that had been pushed by Obama. And while many legal scholars question whether the vote will be binding, the overwhelming approval gives the national GOP momentum as Arizona, Florida and Oklahoma hold similar votes during midterm elections in November.
"It's a big number," state Sen. Jim Lembke, R-Lemay, said of the vote. "I expected a victory, but not of this magnitude. This is going to propel the issue and several other issues about the proper role of the federal government."
From almost the moment the Democratic-controlled Congress passed the health care law — which aims to increase the number of Americans with health insurance — Republicans have vowed to try to repeal it. Their primary argument is that they believe the federal government should not be involved in mandating health care decisions at the local level.
While repeal might seem an unlikely strategy, the effort to send a message state by state that voters don't approve of being told they have to buy insurance could gain momentum.
That's what Republicans are counting on at least, hoping that the Missouri vote will give the national movement momentum.
"It's like a domino, and Missouri is the first one to fall," Cunningham said. "Missouri's vote will greatly influence the debate in the other states."
Proposition C faced little organized opposition, although the Missouri Hospital Association mounted a mailer campaign opposing the ballot issue in the last couple of weeks. The hospital association, which spent more than $300,000 in the losing effort, said that without the new federal law, those who don't have insurance will cause health care providers and other taxpayers to have higher costs.
"The only way to get to the cost problem in health care is to expand the insurance pool," said hospital association spokesman Dave Dillon. He said the hospital association didn't plan to sue over the law, but he expected it would be challenged.
"I think there is going to be no shortage of people who want to use the courts to resolve this issue," he said.
Democrats also generally opposed Proposition C, though they didn't spend much time or money talking about it.
In the closing days of the campaign, many politicians 'sidled up" to Proposition C, Cunningham said, seeing the momentum the issue had gained.
Among them was U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, who won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate on Tuesday night. Late last week, Blunt announced his support of Proposition C.
On Monday, Blunt said he hoped Missouri voters would send a "ballot box message" to the Obama's administration by overwhelmingly passing the measure.
The question now is whether the administration will respond by suing the state to block passage of the law, much as it did in Arizona recently over illegal immigration.
The issue in both is the same: When state laws conflict with federal laws, the courts have generally ruled in favor of the federal government, because of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Richard Reuben, a law professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, said that if the federal government sues on the issue, it would likely win. Several other Missouri legal and political scholars agreed.
But Cunningham is undaunted. She's got her own experts, and they're ready to do battle in court.
"Constitutional experts disagree," she said. "There is substantial legal status to this thing."




Prop C passes overwhelmingly

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Mo. voters reject key provision of health care law
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Aug 4, 12:51 AM (ET)





JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a key provision of President Barack Obama's health care law, sending a clear message of discontent to Washington and Democrats less than 100 days before the midterm elections.
About 71 percent of Missouri voters backed a ballot measure, Proposition C, that would prohibit the government from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them for not having it.
The Missouri law conflicts with a federal requirement that most people have health insurance or face penalties starting in 2014.
Tuesday's vote was seen as largely symbolic because federal law generally trumps state law. But it was also seen as a sign of growing voter disillusionment with federal policies and a show of strength by conservatives and the tea party movement.
"To us, it symbolized everything," said Annette Read, a tea party participant from suburban St. Louis who quit her online retail job to lead a yearlong campaign for the Missouri ballot measure. "The entire frustration in the country ... how our government has misspent, how they haven't listened to the people, this measure in general encompassed all of that."
Missouri's ballot also featured primaries for U.S. Senate, Congress and numerous state legislative seats. But at many polling places, voters said they were most passionate about the health insurance referendum.
"I believe that the general public has been duped about the benefits of the health care proposal," said Mike Sampson of Jefferson City, an independent emergency management contractor, who voted for the proposition. "My guess is federal law will in fact supersede state law, but we need to send a message to the folks in Washington, D.C., that people in the hinterlands are not happy."
The health care referendum was helped by a high Republican turnout. In Missouri's open primaries, voters do not have to register their party affiliation. But far more people picked Republican ballots than Democratic ones Tuesday.
Republican lawmakers originally wanted to place the measure on Missouri's November ballot in the form of a state constitutional amendment. But to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the state Senate, they agreed to scale it back to a proposed law and place it on the primary ballot.
Legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana and Virginia have passed similar statutes without referring them to the ballot, and voters in Arizona and Oklahoma will vote on such measures as state constitutional amendments in November. Missouri was the first state to challenge aspects of the federal law in a referendum.
The intent of the federal requirement is to broaden the pool of healthy people covered by insurers, thus holding down premiums that otherwise would rise because of separate provisions prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with poor health or pre-existing conditions.
But the insurance requirement has been one of the most contentious parts of the new federal law. Public officials in well over a dozen states, including Missouri, have filed lawsuits claiming Congress overstepped its constitutional authority by requiring citizens to buy health insurance.
Federal courts are expected to weigh in well before the insurance requirement takes effect about whether the federal health care overhaul is constitutional.
The Missouri Hospital Association spent $400,000 warning people that passage of the ballot measure could increase hospitals' costs for treating the uninsured, but there was little opposition to the measure from either grass-roots organizations or from the unions and consumer groups that backed the federal overhaul.
Some Missouri voters who opposed the ballot measure cited a potential cost-shift to those who have insurance if some people are allowed to continue visiting emergency rooms without insurance. Other opponents of Missouri's ballot measure said they wanted to give Obama's health care plan a chance to work.
"I don't think people should be walking around sick," said Kathy Ward, a 57-year-old Columbia nurse, who voted against Missouri's law. "The fact remains, people have the right to have health care, and they should get it. It help makes a healthier society."





My Way News - Mo. voters reject key provision of health care law
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