On November 23, while all of Texas was preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving, 17 Texas senators were studying how to “efficiently implement” the new federal healthcare provisions. After hearing invited testimony from Texas Health and Human Services, Texas Medicaid and Texas Department of Insurance executives, the panel was slated to hear public comment. So many had come to Austin to make their voices heard that the hearing room was packed wall to wall, three rows deep standing room only. An overflow room was opened and many witnessed the invited testimony on video monitors while others waited in the hallway outside the hearing room. Citizens from all over the state had traveled to Austin to make their voices heard. Unfortunately only two of the senators remained to hear what they had to say.
While the focus during the invited testimony centered on how to implement the new federal healthcare guidelines, the citizens’ voices harmoniously called for the state to refuse to dance to Washington D.C.’s tune. While the senators asked “should we create a healthcare exchange in Texas or should we allow the federal government to create the exchange for us”; the citizens answered with a resounding “neither”. The public witnesses schooled the senators on the basics of government sponsored healthcare reminding them that a healthcare exchange would lead in short order to a single payer system. A government subsidized exchange would, amongst its many calamities, drive private health insurance out of Texas and insure nothing more than the complete destruction of the last vestiges of private free-market healthcare. They understood that single payer systems mean long lines and rationed care.
Texans are serious about sovereignty. Since there is no constitutional authority for federal involvement in health care, Texas citizens testified that Texas and not Washington D.C. should be addressing the issue. Health care is indeed both complex and broken. Fixing it does not involve more government intervention but less. Texas must opt out of any further involvement in federal health care. That weaning process will likely be painful but it won’t be solved with the medicine bureaucrats have been forcing down our throats for the last 60 years.
Costs of both health care and health insurance have skyrocketed specifically because of government intervention and regulation. While no one wants people to go without necessary health care, we must recognize that more government intervention will guarantee that many go without. Our ability to enjoy those certain unalienable Rights, among them Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, demands that we follow the Constitution; that we restrain government at every level, federal, state and local; and, that we have the courage to let individuals once again reap the fruit of their own labor.
The Texas Legislature must begin to stand sovereign for Texas. Insist that your legislators get serious about protecting our freedom!
