Former Colorado Governor Bill Owens has formally endorsed a yes vote on Amendment 63, the “Right to Health Care Choice” citizens’ initiative. Says Owens:

Amendment 63 is a crucial antidote to the kind of costly mandates Washington, D.C. has given us with Obama Care. This initiative on November’s statewide ballot will help keep our state from heading down the dangerous path to more government control of medicine. I therefore strongly urge Coloradans to support Amendment 63.

Bill Owens served as the 40th Governor of Colorado. He joins a growing list of former state and federal elected officials from Colorado who support Amendment 63 including former U.S. Senator and president of the University of Colorado Hank Brown, former Colorado Congressman Bob Beauprez and former Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives Lola Spradley.

The Pueblo Chieftain newspaper today endorsed Amendment 63, the “Right to Health Care Choice” citizens’ amendment. Money quote:

While the constitutionality of ObamaCare is likely to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, we agree that Colorado state government should not be an agent for the act’s mandate that people buy insurance or be fined.

Vote YES on Amendment 63.

Check out the whole endorsement here.

The Denver Post’s Sunday perspective page features Independence Institute president Jon Caldara and health care policy center director Linda Gorman laying out the case for Amendment 63, the “Right to Health Care Choice” citizens’ amendment. Jon and Linda write that “Washington went too far when it passed health care reform this year.”

It is worth noting that the majority of funding for the campaign against Amendment 63 and health care choice in Colorado comes from big union, monied interests in Washington D.C.; $65,000 from the Service Employees International Union, $15,000 from the AFL-CIO and $65,000 from the National Education Association.

In addition, beneficiaries of forcing people to buy health insurance products from large corporations that they may neither want, nor be able to afford, also oppose health care choice in Colorado. The advocates of massive corporate-welfare schemes like Obama Care includes the Colorado Medical Society and the Colorado Hospital Association. Add in the fact that some establishment media has editorialized against health care choice (though pro-liberty, pro-freedom media like the Colorado Springs Gazette says Amendment 63 “protects our freedom”) and it becomes obvious that Amendment 63 is a clear line in the sand between the dictates and desires of a big-government political class in Washington and its takings coalition cronies and their enablers in Colorado, against the rest of us.

So here is the Caldara and Gorman piece in its entirety. And remember, if you can read this, you are the resistance.

Stop D.C. Yes on 63.

Washington went too far when it passed health care reform this year. While the voters of Colorado can’t change federal law, we can amend Colorado’s constitutional Bill of Rights to guarantee a right to health care choice and to stand up to D.C.

Amendment 63 — the Health Care Choice Amendment — makes certain that state officials cannot force you to buy a health insurance product you do not want, from a large corporation that you may not like, at a price that you may not be able to afford.

The amendment does three clear and unambiguous things:
• It guarantees that the state of Colorado cannot force you to participate in a health plan against your will.
• It guarantees that you have the right to spend your own money on lawful health care.
• It prevents the state from using your tax money to enforce federal laws that interfere with these rights. In this, Amendment 63 sends a strong message to politicians in Washington, D.C.

There are three reasons why the Colorado Constitution needs to be amended to protect your rights.

First, it is wrong for government to mandate that people buy a product simply because they are alive. Even mandates to buy car insurance apply only if you own a car and drive it on public roads.

Health insurance mandates require that you buy health services before you buy anything else, whether you want to or not. Food, housing, clothing and transportation all come second. Mandates raise the cost of health care by forcing you to use health insurance to pay for routine health care expenses.

Amendment 63 lowers health care costs by outlawing mandates. Coloradans already know that they can reduce their overall health care bill by buying health insurance policies that have higher deductibles and by paying cash for routine services. Everyone saves money when you pay your doctor directly rather than making him submit a bill to a bureaucratic insurance company.

For example, the cash price for a mammogram at one Denver provider was $135. It was $235 when billed to an insurance company.

People who oppose Amendment 63 claim that health insurance mandates somehow lower health costs. They say mandates reduce costs by forcing people into the insurance pool at gunpoint.

Data from the Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform show they are wrong. It found that for 2007, the estimated cost of uncompensated care for the uninsured in Colorado was $85 per insured person per year. The commission found that forcing everyone into the insurance pool would require an additional $3 billion a year in state spending because people who couldn’t afford mandated health insurance would have to be given taxpayer-funded subsidies so that they could buy it.

With mandates, your premium costs would fall by $85 per insured person, but your taxes would go up by $1,071 per insured person.

Second, Amendment 63 would stop a future state legislature from doing what Massachusetts did: making it illegal to buy the insurance you want, and forcing you to buy the insurance that a group of bureaucratic elitists say you should have. Even better, it stops a future legislature from doing what Canadian provinces did: taking over all health care and forcing everyone to buy health care from the state government at whatever price it dictates.

Under Amendment 63, the Colorado legislature can set up voluntary public health plans just like it does now (63 does not affect voluntary programs such as Medicaid, CHP+, and Medicare).

Third, Amendment 63 protects your right to spend your own money on the health care that you want or need. You can do this in Colorado now, but what will politicians do to you in the future? In most of Canada, doctors are prohibited from accepting patients’ money for covered health services. Amendment 63 guarantees you will always have the right to purchase health care from a willing provider.

Under 63, Colorado will become a safe haven for private health care providers, clinics, hospitals and alternative medicine. And that means jobs, and economic development, along with health care choice.

For us, the rights protected by Amendment 63 are literally a matter of life or death. Jon Caldara’s son, Chance, is a special needs child. He has endured 10 operations in six years of life. He is alive because he had timely access to advanced medical care. Without Amendment 63’s constitutional protections, future bureaucrats could place the medical care that Chance needs far beyond his reach.

Ever heard of “palliative care?” Well, you might want to get familiar with the term. According to Independence Institute Health Care Policy Center Director Linda Gorman, “In certain health policy circles ‘palliative care’ is code for withholding medical treatment that health care bureaucrats deem ‘too expensive’ for ordinary people.”

In her latest op-ed, Linda explains how Amendment 63 protects your right to spend your own money on the health care that you think you need, instead of what government decides you can have. Re-printed in its entirety:

Passing Amendment 63 in November would ensure that you will have the right to use your own money to pay for the medical care that you think you need.

If you live in Colorado you need this protection, and you need it now.

Colorado’s health agencies plan to control your health care even if you have private insurance. They are staffed with people who think that it is their right to control the amount of money you should be allowed to spend on health care. They also believe that they should have the right to determine the treatments that you should be allowed to get.

H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) has finally given them the power to make their dreams a reality. It puts government in control of the medical care that private insurers may offer, lets government track all medical care encounters, and will let the state determine the value of different kinds of medical care.

The Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC) is just one of the “public-private” entities within the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing that wants to tell you what to do. It is cooperating with a number of private foundations, and private businesses, to put limits on your medical care expenditures.

In reports to the private foundations that help support it, CIVHC says that it hopes that the experiments it runs on people in Medicaid, a group forced to accept whatever health care state agencies decide to deliver, “can later be replicated for private payer populations.”

An April 2010 email update from the State Quality Improvement Institute discusses CIVHC’s current project to measure the cost savings from using more palliative care in Medicaid. The email brags that the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing and CIVHC “are teaming up with the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, Kaiser-Permanente Colorado, the National Palliative Care Research Center, and the Center to Advance Palliative Care to conduct a study in Colorado measuring the cost savings of palliative care services for the state Medicaid program.”

People in Medicaid can already get palliative care if they wish. So can everyone else.

In certain health policy circles “palliative care” is code for withholding medical treatment that health care bureaucrats deem “too expensive” for ordinary people. Government agencies trying to lower their health care expenditures love palliative care. They feel that too few people in their programs choose it.

Why pay for medical treatment, they reason, when such treatments have only a moderate chance of success and when it is much less expensive to provide people with all the drugs they need for comfort care?

This attitude permeates government controlled health care systems. It is one reason why European countries with government run systems have much higher cancer mortality rates than the US. It is a lot less expensive to give someone pain killing drugs than a course of radiation or chemotherapy.

Passing Amendment 63 would send a message to elected officials. It would tell them that it is wrong for government to cooperate with private entities to limit an individual’s right to use his own money to pay for the medical care that he needs. It would also amend the Colorado Constitution to preserve the right to spend your own money to buy the medical care that may save your live or the lives of those you love.

Over at the Pueblo Chieftain, Lola Spradley, former speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, has an excellent op-ed endorsing Amendment 63, the “Right to Health Care Choice” citizens amendment. Writes Lola:

We can choose to see a doctor outside of our plan or to pay for health care with cash. That is an important right especially if we want a specific type of health care, such as assisted living, chiropractic, naturopathic, massage, cosmetic surgery and others. Amendment 63 preserves the right to have and pay for the type of health care choices that we want even if state government should decide such services are not medically necessary or may not be covered under insurance.

Amendment 63 preserves your right to buy or not buy insurance from any particular health care plan or system. It preserves your right to buy what best suits your needs and the needs of your loved ones.

Check out the whole thing here.

The 7,000 plus member Colorado Medical Society (CMS) had its annual meeting last weekend, and the Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590, aka Obama Care) was a main focus of the gathering. The CMS apparently surveyed its membership, and according to an excellent Colorado Public Radio news piece, around half of CMS member doctors think the federal health care law “will make health care worse, not better,” around a third say the law “will make health care better,” and the rest call it “a mixed bag” or are not sure.

In other words, CMS member doctors are split over the Affordable Care Act. This begs the question then, did the CMS also survey its membership on Amendment 63, the “Right to Health Care Choice” citizens amendment before sending a spokesperson out to speak against 63?

Since the Secretary of State certified Amendment 63 (and even before that, actually), Edie Sonn, who is the director of public affairs for the Colorado Medical Society, has been widely quoted (including her CMS title) by numerous media outlets speaking against Amendment 63, usually in connection with the campaign against Amendment 63, called Colorado Deserves Better. Here’s an example from an August 26 Denver Business Journal piece on Amendment 63 making it on to the November ballot:

Colorado Deserves Better, a group of medical professionals and consumer advocates opposed to Amendment 63, immediately issued a statement that it will press voters to defeat an amendment it called costly, complicated and unnecessary.

“This constitutional amendment will lead to higher health care costs for insured individuals and businesses as they are forced to absorb the costs of the uninsured,” said Edie Sonn, director of public affairs for the Colorado Medical Society. “In addition, Amendment 63 could incite a frenzy of lawsuits, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

This cost shifting argument is of course incorrect and misleading, as the Independence Institute’s Brian Schwartz has pointed out. But that the public affairs director of the CMS is actively speaking out against 63 certainly gives the impression that she is representing the position of the Colorado Medical Society (or at the very least, speaking on behalf of the CMS leadership), yet nowhere on the Colorado Deserves Better website is the CMS listed as being officially opposed to Amendment 63. Similarly, a perusal of the CMS website shows no statement of opposition to 63.

We do know that not all CMS member doctors agree with Edie Sonn. Here is a comment left on the HuffPost Denver from Paul Hsieh, MD, a CMS member doctor from Sedalia, Colorado:

The mandatory insurance idea forming the core of ObamaCare has already been tried — and failed — in Massachusetts, resulting only in skyrocketing health costs, a desperate shortage of doctors, and significantly longer waits for medical care than in the rest of the country. Some Massachusetts patients must now wait almost a year for a routine physical exam.

As a practicing physician, such Massachusetts-style problems are the last thing I want here in Colorado. Colorado voters can avoid the mistakes of Massachusetts by supporting Amendment 63.

So we are actually quite curious as to whether the CMS ever surveyed its membership on Amendment 63, and whether there is any more or less a consensus among the CMS member doctors concerning Amendment 63 as there is concerning Obama Care.

Over at the opinion page of the Colorado Springs Gazette, Independence Institute research associate and health care blogger Brian Schwartz exposes both the flaws and deceptions in the ¨cost-shifting¨ argument being used against Amendment 63, the ¨Right to Health Care Choice¨ citizens amendment.

While seductive at an emotional and superficial level, the ¨cost-shifting¨argument simply falls apart under some solid scrutiny.

Re-printed in its entirety:

Mandatory insurance takes what’s wrong with health insurance and makes it worse. It means higher costs, affordable insurance becomes illegal, and less incentive to please patients. Amendment 63 would block Colorado politicians from imposing mandatory insurance. It would also prevent the feds from pressuring the Colorado legislature to enforce Washington’s version of it.

In opposition, Edie Sonn of the Colorado Medical Society says Amendment 63 “will lead to higher health care costs for insured individuals and businesses as they are forced to absorb the costs of the uninsured.” This cost-shifting argument is both wrong and deceptive. Mandatory insurance will increase costs and impose much larger cost shifts.

President Obama says we’re “paying 900 bucks on average” because some uninsured patients don’t pay medical bills. He’s referring to a Families USA study that Independence Institute economist Linda Gorman has shown to be highly flawed. The study over-estimated the cost of uncompensated medical care. It “disregarded categories accounting for roughly 33 percent of the payments” for the uninsured such as auto insurance, community health centers, and various government programs.

The cost shift is no more than $85 annually per insured Coloradan, according to the Lewin Group’s 2007 “Baseline Coverage and Spending” report for the Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission. This amount is trivial compared to how much mandatory insurance increases premiums. Consider Massachusetts, which has mandated insurance since 2006. The most affordable plans sold through Massachusetts’ insurance exchange cost almost three times more than those available in Fort Collins. The Boston Globe reports that the premiums in Massachusetts are the highest in the country and emergency room visits and costs have increased.

Mandatory insurance entrenches the main cause of high health care and insurance costs: The patient is rarely the paying customer. Health care prices decrease or stabilize when patients pay, rather than insurers. Examples include Lasik, and cosmetic surgery, and whether you like it or not, abortion.

But patients are rarely customers because the tax code and other controls favor excessive insurance. The typical health plan is not insurance, but prepaid health care. If car insurance worked this way it would cover routine and predictable expenses such as oil changes and new brakes.

Prepaid health care insulates patients from the true costs of treatment. Patients are typically oblivious to prices or more affordable alternatives. Since the patient isn’t paying, physicians have incentive to exaggerate diagnoses such that third-party payers (insurers, Medicare, Medicaid) will finance expensive treatment. Prices of health care and insurance soar as a result.

Mandatory insurance makes this worse by banning lower-cost insurance policies. Politicians mandate costly benefits and limit deductibles, which both increase premiums and further distort insurance into prepaid health care. A typical mandated benefit increases insurance premiums by about 0.75 percent, concludes a 2008 study lead by MIT economist Amanda Kowalski.

Legal health plans under the Obama health control law must include at least ten mandated benefits such as laboratory, preventive and wellness services (HR 3590, sec. 1302). If you paid cash for such services you’d make sure they were necessary. Such discretion isn’t needed if your health plan pays.

The CMS opposes Amendment 63 by objecting to cost-shifting. But mandatory insurance does this, too. Instead of saving money to self-insurance, banning lower-cost policies makes people buy more costly and comprehensive insurance than they’d like.

For more affordable insurance and health care, politicians should repeal damaging political controls, not add them. For example, change the unfair pro-insurance tax code so it no longer punishes people for paying cash for medical care.

There’s no right to medical care, but we have the right to seek it through voluntary exchange. Colorado Amendment 63 would protect Coloradans from politicians seeking to violate this right.

The Colorado Springs Gazette has an outstanding editorial on Amendment 63, the “Right to Health Care Choice” citizens amendment, calling it a “great idea” that has become certainty. One money quote out of many:

Amendment 63 would make Colorado an attractive haven for health care development, competition, and medical tourism, thus improving the health care options of Coloradans and boosting the economy.

This country hasn’t prospered and flourished because of federal mandates. We have flourished because of freedom. Amendment 63 will be one giant step in protecting freedom for Coloradans.

Read the entire terrific piece here.