Gazette Sets Record Straight On Anti-Amendment 63 Fearmongering
Over at the Colorado Springs Gazette editorial page, Wayne Laugesen eviscerates one of the most reckless and desperate distortions being made against Amendment 63, the “Right to Health Care Choice” citizens’ amendment: that if Amendment 63 passes, the state “might” not be able to license doctors, or otherwise regulate health care services and providers.
Not so, writes Wayne:
Amendment 63 protects the right of Coloradans to make or receive direct payments for lawful health care services because in Canada, socialized medicine has prevented patients from buying their own health care. To pay for health care was considered an effort to skip ahead in long government waiting lines. For some it has been wait and die, or travel to the United States and pay.
But the Center on Law and Policy has decided to scare us by saying the protection of an individual’s right to make or receive direct payments for health care services might entitle people without medical licences to receive payments for health care services. After all, Amendment 63 speaks of “any person,” not “any doctor.”
At least two Colorado newspapers, the Grand Junction Sentinel and the Denver Post, fell for the hysteria and repeated it. A Post editorial said: “There is concern among opponents that the measure’s wording would preclude the state’s ability to license and regulate health care, which seems at least a plausible legal interpretation of the proposed amendment.”
No, it does not. The Amendment would protect the right of persons to make or receive payments of “lawful” health care services. That means it would not protect making or receiving payments for “unlawful” services, which means the state would continue to forbid soda jerks from performing heart transplants.
Read the whole excellent piece here.
