Arizonans for healthcare freedom

the arizona strategy

 
 
January 23, 2010

AZ Central

Dr. Eric Novack

The misinformation campaign against the Arizona Health Care Freedom Act has officially begun. Our opponents have found quite a platform, too: The front page of the New York Times.

The premise of the Times' Dec. 28 article is that the Arizona referendum, already on the 2010 ballot, and the national movement it has started - about 24 other state legislatures will have similar bills this year - is, in fact, a sneaky effort by the "health lobby" to "stop reform." Nothing could be further from the truth.

I should know. I had the idea for the Health Care Freedom Act in 2006. As a doctor who has taken care of patients, rich and poor, young and old, for over two decades, in every setting from ambulances to homeless clinics to VA hospitals to trauma centers and community hospitals, the future was clear to me back then: Unless we act decisively to protect the rights of patients to make their own health-care decisions, those rights will be the first ones sacrificed on the altar of health-care reform.

Sadly, my prediction has proved to be true, not because the "health lobby" has opposed reforms, as the New York Times stated, but rather because health-care special interests have embraced those reforms in the same way Mafia dons "embrace" a newly made man. The recent past highlights that point. During the 2008 election cycle in Arizona, a truly grass-roots effort resulted in 330,000 signatures and in Proposition 101, the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, making the ballot. Our goal? To chisel two basic rights into Arizona's Constitution: The right to choose not to participate in a health plan without penalty and the right to always spend your own money on health-care services.

Who opposed us in that effort, outspending our modest campaign by a ratio of 5-1? Health insurance companies with government contracts. Not a single dime of financial or rhetorical support came from any of the entrenched health-care interests - the very same special interests who have been busy cutting deals with the Obama administration and congressional leaders over the last year.

Proposition 101 lost by 0.4 percent in 2008. Undaunted, we improved the measure's language and added clarity. Now, even Arizona's Medicaid department has no issue that the Arizona Health Care Freedom Act will in any way threaten the state's Medicaid services. In June, the state Legislature voted to place the measure on the November 2010 ballot.

The insurance mandate currently before Congress is every insurance company's dream - a law requiring every citizen to buy their product or face penalties. That compromise in freedom has been vocally opposed, until this year, by the AFL-CIO, the California Nurses Association, and yes, Barack Obama.

Then-candidate Obama said that forcing people who can't afford it to buy insurance will leave them worse off than before.

We agree. We also believe it's wrong to allow bureaucrats, public or private, to stop Americans from spending their own money for legal health-care services.

Dr. Eric Novack is chairman of Arizonans for Health Care Freedom.

<- Go Back