This morning the WSJ opinion page highlights Arizona Proposition 101 as a model for protecting the individual's right to choose their own health care. Its outcome could fuel widespread protections of patient rights across the country which is very threatening to those intent on heavy handed government controls.
"Proposition 101 goes to the heart of the national health-care debate. Universal coverage plans, regulated by government, nearly always try to restrain costs by restricting the choices individual can make. This assumes a uniformity in the real-world of patients or the practice of medicine that simply doesn't exist, especially amid rapid developments in medical science. Who should decide -- the patient or a government treatment schedule -- whether a cancer sufferer should be able to try an experimental therapy or under what circumstances a senior citizen gets a hip replacement?"
Proposition 101, the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, reads that "no law shall be passed that restricts a person's freedom of choice of private heath care systems or private plans of any type." Also: "No law shall interfere with a person's right to pay directly for lawful medical services . . ."
Like Prop 102, which would protect the definition of marriage in Arizona, you can learn a lot about a ballot initiative by the passions it inflames in those trying to circumvent the public will.
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