Staff report
NASHVILLE — Republicans in the General Assembly have introduced legislation that seeks to use a little-known provision in the U.S. Constitution to attack federal health care reform.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Mae Beavers, R-Mt. Juliet, said Monday that her bill would authorize Tennessee to join a health care “compact” with other states. The purpose, said Beavers, a persistent critic of the federal law, would be “returning the responsibility and authority of regulating health care to the states.”
She called the compact, which would have to be approved by Congress, a “powerful vehicle for states to confront the federal health care law.”
Compacts are created through legislative action of member states and then must try to receive congressional approval. Beavers and supporters, including Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, said they are confident the bill will pass the Tennessee legislature and, despite a Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, pass both houses of Congress.
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State senators passed legislation today that proponents say would let Tennesseans opt out of the federal health care law.
Reject this grandstanding nonsense today. Not only did President Obama save Chattanooga's insurance industry with the biggest providing of business since President Clinton's FMLA, but this legislation is outright embarrassing.
Stop trying to waste our time with defying the fact that not only was health care payment reform passed, but that most people want more of it.
Look at what poor support our state's Republicans have provided for health care. We have had a senator who was a heart surgeon, and they still failed to provide basic humanitarian regard for suffering people.
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