Ohio health care law opponents to file petitions

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Oppo­nents of the new fed­eral health care over­haul say they’ve gath­ered enough sig­na­tures to ask Ohio vot­ers this fall whether the state should amend its con­sti­tu­tion to keep peo­ple from being required to buy health insur­ance or face penalties.

The amendment’s back­ers acknowl­edge that approval of the mea­sure won’t auto­mat­i­cally exempt the state from the man­date in Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care over­haul. But they say they hope to use the amend­ment to legally chal­lenge the law.

A coali­tion of tea party groups called the Ohio Lib­erty Coun­cil is among the amendment’s sup­port­ers who planned on Wednes­day to file more than 546,000 sig­na­tures with Ohio Sec­re­tary of State Jon Husted. They need roughly 385,000 valid sig­na­tures for the amend­ment ques­tion to get on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The amend­ment would pro­hibit any fed­eral, state or local law from forc­ing Ohio res­i­dents, employ­ers or health care providers to par­tic­i­pate in a health care system.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion has argued that the cov­er­age require­ments rest on a solid con­sti­tu­tional foun­da­tion: the power of Con­gress to reg­u­late inter­state commerce.

But crit­ics say that does not give the gov­ern­ment the right to direct peo­ple to buy spe­cific goods or services.

Last week, a fed­eral appeals court in Cincin­nati affirmed the mer­its of the health care law, agree­ing that the gov­ern­ment can require a min­i­mum amount of insur­ance for Americans.

Tim­o­thy Jost, a pro­fes­sor at Wash­ing­ton and Lee Uni­ver­sity law school in Vir­ginia, said unless reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the rul­ing by the three-judge 6th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals already set­tles the ques­tion of whether Ohio res­i­dents would be required under the fed­eral law to buy health insurance.

“At this point it serves no legal pur­pose,” Jost said. “It’s just a polit­i­cal statement.”

Chris Lit­tle­ton, a co-founder of the Ohio Lib­erty Coun­cil, con­tends the amend­ment would pro­vide the best chance for a case over whether the man­date is con­sti­tu­tional. He said it also would ban any future state-passed man­dates from being imposed on Ohio residents.

Such amend­ments are being pushed in other states. Law­mak­ers in Alabama, Florida and Wyoming are putting sim­i­lar mea­sures before vot­ers next year, the National Con­fer­ence of State Leg­is­la­tures says.

More than 30 legal chal­lenges have been filed over the health care over­haul, some focus­ing on dif­fer­ent issues such as states’ rights.

If the Ohio amend­ment meets state require­ments, vot­ers in the polit­i­cal bell­wether could have a chance to weigh in on two divi­sive new laws this November.

Last week, oppo­nents of Ohio’s new col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing restric­tions deliv­ered nearly 1.3 mil­lion sig­na­tures to Husted’s office. Pro­po­nents of the ref­er­en­dum, which would inval­i­date the entire bill, need just over 231,000 valid sig­na­tures to get on the ballot.

Husted’s office has until July 26 to ver­ify both sets of signatures.

Posted by AP News on Jul 6 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.