Take health care in Colorado.  Last year, State Rep John Kefalas sponsored legislation that would have laid “the groundwork” for government-controlled health care, a.k.a. single-payer, to all Coloradans by 2011. It failed even in the Democrat-controlled state legislature.

This year, Kefalas and other Democratic legislators tried a different approach. HB 1330, the All-Payer Health Care Cost Database was signed into law by Governor Ritter on May 26. The bill grants unlimited power to the Executive Director of Health Care Policy and Financing to mandate the collection of any and all health care data, to conduct audits, to give the data to third parties without seeking permission, and to impose unlimited fines for refusing to provide data to the database.

The legislation is a frightening invasion of privacy because patients and providers have no say over whether the state may have, according to the bill, “access to individual information on physical functioning, medical treatment, supposed mental stability, marital problems, family structure, sexual habits, addictions, adherence to government health recommendations, and individual financial arrangements.”

Kefalas bragged about the massive privacy invasion in a press release, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” In other words the state must know the intimate details of your private medical records in order to “manage” your health care for you.

Sponsors of the legislation say your information will be secure and private…wink, wink. Colorado state government has a history of losing supposedly secure data. In this era of Big Data, there is no way to guarantee privacy or security. In the words of CU Associate Law Professor Paul Ohm, who specializes in privacy issues, “data can either be useful or perfectly anonymous but never both.”

Furthermore, the database will be funded by “unknown” sources with “unknown” agendas. Whoever is willing to pay to establish the database will have access to your private medical information.

In a paper released last fall, Ohm refers to “databases of ruin” where an individual’s most personal information is stored. Nate Anderson, senior editor of ARS Technica, summarized Ohm’s paper, “Scrubbing data just isn’t enough to keep our individual ‘databases of ruin’ out of the hands of the police, political enemies, nosy neighbors, friends, and spies.”

So where are all the privacy advocates from the Left?  Where are the champions of “choice”?  You’d think they would have marched en masse to the Capitol to protest such a massive intrusion into medical privacy.

But an online search turned up a grand total of two dissenting voices against such a significant government intrusion into individual rights and privacy: Amy Oliver-Cooke and Linda Gorman, both from the Independence Institute.

If I missed a single progressive voice against HB 1330, I’d love to know about it.

The problem with governing is that it sometimes makes a mockery of principles once championed. And obedient allies remain silent as politics replaces concern over those pesky principles of privacy and choice.

A version of this was originally published in The Huffington Post

By an extremely narrow majority, the House of Representatives has crammed a profoundly unpopular and unconstitutional measure down the throats of the American public:  And not only unpopular and unconstitutional, but expensive enough to virtually ensure our nation’s eventual bankruptcy.

Unless it is overturned, nationalized health care will complete the process of changing the Founders’ system of a government dependent on the people to one where the people are dependent on the government.  Citizens will be thoroughly re-molded into subjects.

The unseemly legislative conduct (the Founders would have called it “corruption”) leading up to the vote have communicated even to those previously not paying attention that federal politicians are now absolutely, utterly out of control.  The majority in Congress has rendered it perfectly clear that there is no constitutional or legal restriction they will not violate.

As congressional rumblings about the recent Citizens United decision have suggested, protections for free speech may be next.

There is no “good” response to these outrages – that is, “good” in the sense of easy and foolproof: After all, the very people who perpetrated them also control America’s nuclear arsenal.  There are only responses that, while difficult, offer real hope of success.  Here are a few:

*    Widespread court challenges, on every colorable constitutional, legal, and technical ground we can think of.  State governments can take a leading role in this, by virtue of the fact that state governments are more likely than individuals to have standing in federal court.  State governments and officials also have much to lose if the feds are allowed to complete their health care takeover.

*    Health care provider non-compliance:  To the extent they can, physicians and other providers should opt out of the system.  Their choices include partial or complete refusal to participate in Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs; refusal to take any but direct-payment patients; reduced work hours; and even career change and early retirement.  Students considering a medical career should now reconsider.  Given the ominous nature of the federal health care coup d’etat, my guess is that a lot of this will happen anyway.

*    State constitutional amendments.  One excellent idea is the amendment proposed in Colorado guaranteeing that the state will never participate in any system that denies patients and physicians the right to their own health-care decisions.

*    Civil disobedience.  This should include state non-compliance with federal health-care mandates and peaceful resistance by providers and citizens at every level.  The model here should be the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

*    Redoubling efforts for the 2010 elections.  The people responsible for this bill should be cleaned out of Congress – all of them.  In addition, we need to gear up for 2012 and ensure that state lawmakers elected in 2010 fully understand their constitutional obligations.

*    Amend-to-Save.  A clean sweep of Congress is not enough.  There is now no escaping it – we need amend our Constitution to save it, or we will not have any Constitution left.

There is nothing new in this last proposal.  Our fathers, grandfathers, and their predecessors all adopted constitutional amendments designed less to change the system than to preserve it.  Again and again, the American people adopted formal amendments to rein in the politicians and restore or reinforce Founding principles.

Thus, the Ninth Amendment made clear that federal powers were not to be interpreted too expansively.  The Tenth Amendment clarified that the central government had no authority other than that granted by the Constitution.  The Eleventh reversed a Supreme Court opinion that conflicted with the dominant understanding of the ratifiers.  The Twenty-First Amendment restored control over alcoholic beverages to the states, where the Founders had left it.  The Twenty-Second Amendment restored the two-term presidential tradition set by Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.  The Twenty-Seventh, although not finally adopted until 1992, had been proposed by James Madison and sent to the states by the First Congress.  The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth (the post-Civil War amendments) were more radical, but also principally fulfilled the ideals of the Founding.

Now we need a Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Ninth, and Thirtieth Amendment – not so much to change the Founders’ Constitution as to restore it.  How?   Congress will not reform itself.  Fortunately, the Founders recognized that when Congress veered completely out of control, there had to be a way to amend without its consent.  Hence, they wrote into the Constitution a procedure whereby two-thirds of the states could propose amendments, which would then be drafted by a convention, and approved only if three-quarters of the states ratified them.

We now have no choice: We are going to have to use that method.  That’s why state legislative races are so important this year.

On Sunday night the US House of Representatives passed what we call “Obama-care.” This is one of the darkest moments in American history. The federal government has taken a large step towards control of our healthcare, and with it control of our very bodies. The federal government is taking away our decisions over health insurance and, unprecedented in history, forcing citizens to purchase private products, ultimately under penalty of incarceration.

We at the Independence Institute refuse to watch this atrocity corrode the quality of healthcare in Colorado. For months we have been at work bringing forward an amendment to the Colorado Constitution to preserve as a basic human right our “Right to Health Care Choice.” It is my goal to make Colorado a sanctuary state for quality healthcare.

This citizens’ initiative is very close to the petition stage. Soon we will need as many volunteer petition gatherers as possible. We will also need funding to wage this battle. I ask you, right now, to donate to our fight. I desperately need your talents, your time, and your resources to protect Colorado from this affront coming from DC. We can stop Washington.

Read the amendment here.

Give us your contact info to help gather signatures.

And please donate to this fight here. And please don’t wait.

* Become an Defend Colorado fan on Facebook
* Support our education efforts by making a tax deductable donation to the Independence Institute

There remains some significant details to be ironed out.

- President Obama, on his own health reform plan

© 2009, Benjamin Hummel. To see more cartoons like this go to www.politixcartoons.com.

Sen. Mark Udall
Aug. 24: Sen. Udall will hold a field hearing of his National Parks Subcommittee in Estes Park.

Aug. 27: Sen. will hold a town hall in Durango about energy.

Additional events on the Senator’s schedule will be released to the local media a few days prior to each event.

Sen. Michael Bennet

Aug. 14, 8 a.m.: Town Hall Meeting in Summit County; (location TBD)

Aug. 14, 10:30 a.m.: Town Hall Meeting at Colorado Mountain College, 150 Miller Ranch Road, Edwards

This month, Bennet “will be visiting over 30 counties to talk to Coloradans about the issues that are important to them, such as health care, the economy, energy, fiscal discipline and more,” said spokeswoman Deirdre Murphy

Rep. Diana DeGette

DeGette has plans for a telephone town hall this week for constituents about health care.

“The rest of the congresswoman’s schedule is still under development for August,” said spokesman Kris Eisenla

Rep. Jared Polis

Congressman Polis held public events in Keystone and Boulder this week.

A full list of future public events can be found on the congressman’s website, at: polis.house.gov/Calendar/

Rep. John Salazar, D-Manassa

Salazar’s office did not respond to a request for information on public events planned for August.

Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Fort Collins

Congresswoman Markey will be holding a series of Congress on Your Corner listening sessions in addition to larger, issues-focused meetings, said spokesman Ben Marter. As dates and times are confirmed they will be announced locally around the district.

“This month we’ll take some of the most critical issues facing our country home to Colorado. I’ll be meeting with people across Northern and Eastern Colorado to hear their thoughts, questions and concerns, and to have a frank and constructive conversation about health care reform in America,” Markey said.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs

Lamborn’s office did not respond to a request for information on public events planned for August.

Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora

Aug. 12, 6:30 p.m.: Arapahoe County town hall meeting, East Hearing Room, Arapahoe County Administration Building, 5334 South Prince Street, Littleton, 6:30 p.m.

Coffman will also be holding town hall meetings in Douglas and Elbert counties. Details will be forthcoming

“August represents an important opportunity for Members to hear from constituents about pressing issues,” Coffman said. “Right now that means health care and jobs. Americans have real concerns with the Democrat proposals and I look forward to discussing these concerns at my upcoming town hall meetings.”

Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Golden

A list of public events is included on Perlmutters’s website:

http://www.perlmutter.house.gov/events.aspx

“We will update the site as we add any events,” spokeswoman Leslie Oliver said.

Every once in awhile the center-right gets ticked off enough about a certain issue that we take to the streets and rally for individual rights, liberty, and less government interference. Take for example the pork roast stimulus rally, the Betsey Markey health care rally, and all the tea parties. This action of course, creates a counter-action from the loony left. Most are content to simply try and discredit our efforts, while some go as far as inventing anger and pretending to be upset over nonsense (like feigning offense when finding a swastika at a rally). Like clockwork, Tim Gill’s plaything Michael Huttner made it out today to the anti-Obama Care rally down at the capitol. You could say he was on a hunting expedition. Trying his very best to find something he could pretend to be upset with. Fortunately, a photographer at Face the State caught Huttner in the act. See for yourself:

There he is, the Swastika Hunter. Wherever the rights of Socialists may be infringed, he’ll be there. Spying. Peeping.

Would he have a snowball’s chance in hell of being confirmed?