BILL NUMBER: AJR 36	INTRODUCED
	BILL TEXT


INTRODUCED BY   Assembly Member Logue
   (Coauthors: Assembly Members Achadjian, Bill Berryhill, Conway,
Garrick, Hagman, Jones, Mansoor, Miller, Nielsen, Olsen, Silva, and
Wagner)

                        MARCH 27, 2012

   Relative to federal health care reform.


	LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


   AJR 36, as introduced, Logue. The Federal Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act.
   This measure would make various statements regarding the federal
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), would request the
President and the United States Congress to repeal PPACA, and would
encourage federal, state, and local officials to enact health care
reform that, among other things, puts the citizen and his or her
family at the center of the health care system, as specified. The
measure would also request the United States Congress to, among other
things, reform federal tax laws, allow Americans to buy health care
coverage across state lines, allow businesses to create association
health plans, and lift restrictions on employers so they can offer
lower premiums to employees who practice healthy lifestyles, and
would request the Legislature to enact reforms consistent with those
changes, as specified.
   Fiscal committee: no.



   WHEREAS, While the Founding Fathers, after fighting for many years
against the arbitrary tyranny of King George III and the British
aristocracy in Parliament, crafted the United States Constitution in
1787 to preserve the liberty of free Americans by purposely confining
the federal government to enumerated and limited powers, President
Obama, by signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
(PPACA), also known as Obamacare, into law, ultimately grants the
life and death power over how medical care will be provided to future
generations of Americans to a new and unaccountable aristocracy
consisting of a small number of federal politicians, lobbyists, and
federal employees at the United States Department of Health and Human
Services; and
   WHEREAS, When on September 9, 2009, President Obama told the
United States Congress that he was "determined to be the last
president" to take up the cause of health care and advocated for the
federal government to seize the commanding heights and regulatory
direction of the U.S. health care system, he was promoting a
paternalistic, "we decide what you need," top-down model of
government that is at odds with the long and cherished American
tradition of the smart and self-reliant citizen working with others
in local communities to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans;
and
   WHEREAS, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said just prior to passing the
PPACA by a mere Seven votes -- a bill that exceeded 2,700 pages in
length and centralizes control and direction over 17 percent of the
gross domestic product of the country into the hands of a small
number of federal politicians, lobbyists, and federal employees --
that "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it"
; and
   WHEREAS, The Democratic leadership of the United States Congress
decided to pass in March 2010 a bill, without bipartisan support, to
completely restructure one-sixth of the U.S. economy using
vote-buying tactics including the infamous "Louisiana Purchase," the
"Cornhusker Kickback," extra hospital funding for Tennessee, funding
for the University of Connecticut, funding for NASA, water supplies
for one area of California, asbestos money for Montana, and the
federal takeover of the student loan program; and
   WHEREAS, The corrupt enactment of PPACA makes a mockery of the
famous Schoolhouse Rock video titled, "How a Bill Becomes a Law," and
of the lessons taught in every civics classroom in America as seen
in a Heritage Foundation study released on February 21, 2012, that
demonstrates that the Obama Administration dramatically increased
their distribution of millions of taxpayer dollars in administrative
earmarks for at least 32 vulnerable Democrat Congressmen at precisely
the time when the House of Representatives was voting on the Cap and
Trade bill on June 26, 2009, the Dodd-Frank financial regulation
bill on December 11, 2009, and PPACA on March 21, 2010; and
   WHEREAS, Now that the American public, health economists, academic
scholars, and public policy analysts have had a chance to read PPACA
and "find out what is in it" after its enactment, more and more
evidence is emerging every day that demonstrates that PPACA contains
numerous major flaws, including the fact that it: is
unconstitutional; will "bend the cost curve up" as health care costs
escalate at an even higher rate; will kill jobs; will lower wages;
will outsource jobs overseas; will force people to spend more on
health care without increasing the quality of care received; will
mandate fewer health plan choices for consumers; will cause millions
to lose their employer-sponsored health coverage and personal doctor;
will create a two-tier health care system in which more and more
privately insured citizens will be involuntarily shifted to the
government-run Medicaid program and government-run state exchanges;
will make it much more difficult for Medicare beneficiaries and
privately insured people to establish a long-term relationship with a
primary care physician and specialists when needed; will force
workers to disclose their family incomes to their employer; will
cause longer waiting times in emergency rooms and community clinics;
will force people who do not smoke or eat to the level of obesity to
subsidize the health insurance premiums of those who do; will
decrease the invention of new life-saving drugs and medical devices;
will increase special interest campaign contributions to incumbent
members of Congress and increase the influence of lobbyists and crony
capitalists; will force states to cut education, public safety, and
natural resource protection spending in order to comply with federal
mandates to expand Medicaid spending; will create a new and
unaffordable federal entitlement at a time when the federal
government has a budget deficit that exceeds $1.3 trillion a year;
will force the federal government to borrow more money from foreign
countries that violate human rights; will force religious
institutions that serve the common good to either violate their
deeply held religious beliefs or stop aiding the poor; will
financially penalize married couples; will force taxpayers to
subsidize abortions; and unleash the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
to hunt down and fine otherwise law-abiding individuals and
employers; and
   WHEREAS, While the President of the United States and members of
Congress must take the oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States," PPACA violates the U.S.
Constitution by expanding the reach of the federal government beyond
its traditionally recognized enumerated and limited powers, violates
the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which provides that "The
powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states and
people," violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which
provides that the Congress shall make no law "prohibiting the free
exercise" of religion; and
   WHEREAS, While the Declaration of Independence charged that King
George III had "erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither
swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,"
the Mercatus Center at George Mason University has estimated that
the phrase "the Secretary shall" -- designating items that will
require tens of thousands of pages of new rules and regulations from
the federal government -- appears 1,563 times in PPACA; and
   WHEREAS, Twenty-eight states have filed lawsuits against PPACA,
opposing the law's brazen attempt to override the constitutional
rights of individual citizens, families, and states; and
   WHEREAS, The individual mandate in PPACA, which gives the IRS the
power to impose a series of escalating fines on citizens who don't
purchase a health insurance plan designed by federal politicians,
President Obama's political appointees, lobbyists, and federal
employees in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is an
unprecedented power grab by the federal government and an
unconstitutional attack on each citizen's personal liberty and on the
traditional power of states to ensure the proper regulation of
health care within their jurisdictions; and
   WHEREAS, The individual mandate in PPACA represents the first time
in over 220 years of American history that the federal government
has attempted to require every American to purchase a private product
merely as a condition of lawful residence in the country; and
   WHEREAS, In upholding Virginia's challenge to the
constitutionality of the individual mandate, U.S. District Court
Judge Henry Hudson wrote: "The unchecked expansion of Congressional
power to the limits suggested by the Minimum Essential Coverage
provisions would invite unbridled exercise of federal police power";
and
   WHEREAS, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th District found
that judicial recognition of the Congress to compel Americans to buy
and maintain health insurance under the Commerce Clause would permit
federal regulation of any aspect of life with some economic impact
and thereby undermine our federalist structure; and
   WHEREAS, In oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the 11th District, President Obama's lawyers admitted that, because
they recognize no "doctrinal limiting principles" to the power of the
federal government to use the Commerce Clause to impose the
individual mandate, the federal government even has the power to
impose criminal prosecution and imprisonment on citizens who fail to
buy a private product designed by the federal government; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA contains 18 separate tax increases that will cost
taxpayers an additional $503 billion between 2010 and 2019, and will
slow economic growth, throw Americans out of work, suppress wages for
the currently employed, decrease incentives for individuals to work
and save, and raise health insurance premiums; and
   WHEREAS, While President Obama promised not to raise taxes on
families making less than $250,000 a year, the tax provisions in
PPACA -- including the increased payroll taxes, taxes on drugs and
medical devices, the 40-percent excise tax on certain health care
plans, caps on deposits into a Health Savings Account and Flexible
Spending Account, and increasing the floor on the deduction for
medical expenses from 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income to 10
percent -- will increase taxes on middle-income and lower income
families; and
   WHEREAS, While the hospital insurance portion of the payroll tax
has exclusively been used in the past to ensure the solvency of
social security and Medicare, PPACA raises this portion of the
payroll tax to fund the new PPACA entitlement and thereby tempts
future Congresses to enact payroll tax increases to pay for programs
other than social security and Medicare; and
   WHEREAS, Because the income thresholds related to the increased
payroll tax and new 40 percent excise tax on health plans in PPACA
are not fully indexed for medical inflation, these taxes will hit
more and more middle-income Americans each year until the law is
repealed; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA's new taxes on drugs and medical devices will
disproportionately hurt seniors and the disabled; and
   WHEREAS, The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has
predicted that the employer mandate in PPACA will result in throwing
700,000 Americans out of work; and
   WHEREAS, The National Bureau of Economic Research has predicted
that the job losses caused by PPACA will disproportionately impact
high school dropouts, minorities, and females; and
   WHEREAS, By forcing employers to increase the amount of
compensation provided to workers in the form of expensive
government-designed health insurance plans, the employer mandate in
PPACA will reduce worker pay; and
   WHEREAS, The National Center for Policy Analysis reports that the
employer mandate in PPACA contains strong financial disincentives for
midsize employers to hire no more than 49 total employees and to
hire unskilled people only as part-time employees; and
   WHEREAS, According to data supplied by the U.S. Department of
Labor and the CBO, PPACA's employer mandate will mean that workers
who cannot produce at least $20,853 to $29,332 per year of value to
employers will have serious difficultly finding a full-time job in
California; and
   WHEREAS, The PPACA employer mandate will provide strong financial
incentives to businesses that employ low-skilled workers to respond
by dumping these employees on the taxpayer-subsidized exchanges and
replacing full-time positions with part-time positions and temporary
positions; and
   WHEREAS, At a time of high unemployment, one-third of small
business owners have identified PPACA as one of their top obstacles
to hiring new workers; and
   WHEREAS, Because the employer mandate requires midsize employers
to offer "affordable" coverage, as designed by the federal
government, only to the employee and not to his or her dependents,
Cornell University and Indiana University professors estimated in a
National Bureau of Economic Research working paper that 13 million
low-income Americans may be unable to get subsidized health insurance
through the new state exchanges in 2014; and
   WHEREAS, Because federal politicians crafted perverse incentives
in the employer mandate, some workers with families will actually be
financially better off if they work for a firm that doesn't offer
health insurance or for a firm that offers "unaffordable" insurance
as they and their families would be eligible to obtain
taxpayer-subsidized health insurance; and
   WHEREAS, Because federal politicians wrote into PPACA radically
different and irrational subsidies for people at the same income
level depending on where they obtain their health insurance -- at
work, through an exchange, or through Medicaid -- these subsidies
will cause a huge, uneconomical restructuring of American industry;
and
   WHEREAS, PPACA will create a two-tiered health care system in
which low-income workers will congregate in companies that do not
provide insurance while higher income workers will obtain their
health insurance through their employer; and
   WHEREAS, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the CBO, has
estimated that, because of the ill-conceived structure of the
taxpayer-financed subsidies in PPACA, employers with employees who
live in households below 250 percent of the federal poverty level
will have powerful incentives to drop private employer-sponsored
coverage and instead encourage their employees to obtain insurance
from the taxpayer-subsidized, government-run exchanges; and
   WHEREAS, A Heritage Foundation study has documented that PPACA
will create a strong financial disincentive for certain individuals
to work by the "cliff effect" provision of the law which suddenly
eliminates all subsidies for those individuals who earn just above
400 percent of the federal poverty level; and
   WHEREAS, A survey by McKinsey & Company found that PPACA will lead
to a "radical restructuring" of job-based health coverage as 30
percent of employers say that they are likely to stop offering
workers health insurance coverage when the employer mandate becomes
effective in January 2014; and
   WHEREAS, Despite President Obama's promise to millions of
Americans that "If you like your health insurance, you can keep your
health insurance," the President Obama's own U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services now estimates that by 2013 between
one-third and two-thirds of the 133 million people with coverage
through large employers will lose their grandfathered protection; up
to 80 percent of the 43 million people in small employer plans will
lose their grandfathered protection; and up to 70 percent of those
with coverage in the individual market will be forced to comply with
expensive new federal rules; and
   WHEREAS, A CBO report issued in March 2012 now estimates that 4
million Americans will lose their employer-sponsored health plans by
2016; and
   WHEREAS, A survey by the firm Towers Watson found that 29 percent
of large employers are unsure whether or not they will continuing
offering health insurance coverage after the main provisions of PPACA
take effect in January 2014; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA's one-size-fits-all mandate on what annual and
lifetime benefit limits will be included in all health plans resulted
in the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
issuing 1,578 temporary waivers to employers who said that the
higher costs imposed on them by PPACA would force them to drop health
coverage for their employees altogether; and
   WHEREAS, The provision in PPACA that allows the Secretary of the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to waive certain
provisions of PPACA gives the federal government the power to reward
political allies and campaign donors and punish political opponents;
and
   WHEREAS, A recent survey by Mercer LLC found that 28 percent of
employers believe that compliance with PPACA rules is already
increasing their health care costs and thereby diminishing job and
wage growth; and
   WHEREAS, According to the National Federation of Independent
Business, PPACA is "death by a thousand cuts for small business
owners"; and
   WHEREAS, Because provisions of the employer mandate mean that an
employer can be fined by the IRS in certain circumstances if the
employer's employee qualifies for a subsidy from an exchange due to
changes in the employee's personal circumstances such as a divorce or
a spouse's lost coverage, PPACA will force employers seeking to
avoid the IRS fine to demand detailed household income information
from their employees and thereby result in an unnecessary loss of an
employee's and his or her family's privacy; and
   WHEREAS, Enacting real reform that raises the quality of care
while lowering costs is important because high medical inflation
kills jobs, lowers wages, and forces middle class families to pay
more in taxes. PPACA contains what Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) economist Jonathan Gruber calls a "spaghetti
approach to cost control" in which the strategy is to throw "a bunch
of stuff at the wall to] see what sticks"; and
   WHEREAS, President Obama and congressional Democrats ignored
addressing rising health care costs and wage decreases that impact
over 250 million insured Americans -- a RAND study found that most of
the pay increases that employees have received over the last 10
years have been consumed by increasing health costs -- by solely
focusing on creating a new and unsustainable entitlement program; and

   WHEREAS, Tennessee Governor Philip Bredesen, in the column
"Obamacare's Incentive to Drop Insurance," wrote in the Wall Street
Journal on October 21, 2010, that the economics embedded in PPACA
"become compelling for many employers to simply drop coverage and
help their employees obtain replacement coverage through an exchange"
; and
   WHEREAS, Governor Bredesen estimated that Tennessee, as an
example, could "reduce our annual costs by over $146 million using
the legislated mechanics of health reform to transfer them Tennessee
state employees] to the federal government" and predicts that "Local
governments will find eliminating all coverage particularly
attractive"; and
   WHEREAS, Provisions in the employer mandate and the exchange
regulations will cause disincentives for marriage, as it provides
substantially greater subsidized coverage for couples who live
together and for people who get divorced; and
   WHEREAS, While President Obama promised the American people in
remarks to a joint session of Congress in September 2009 that his
health plan would "cost around $900 billion over ten years," the CBO
estimated in a March 2012 report that PPACA will cost $1.76 billion
(including only the costs of coverage and not implementation and
other costs) between now and 2022 and add $1,083 billion to the
federal deficit; and
   WHEREAS, While President Obama promised the American people that
his plan would "bend the cost curve down," a study released on July
28, 2011, by the actuaries the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services (CMS) found that PPACA will increase, not reduce, national
health expenditures and thereby bend the cost curve up and exacerbate
an already serious problem for individuals, families, and taxpayers;
and
   WHEREAS, While the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that young
adults (ages 19-29) account for 30 percent of the total uninsured
U.S. population and 36.6 percent of all uninsured adults, PPACA
imposes new federal rules that will result in artificially
overpricing the cost of health insurance for young adults who tend to
be in good health but earn less than older workers and thereby
encourage young adults to wait until they need or expect to need
medical care before purchasing health insurance or enrolling in an
employer-sponsored plan; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA will require individuals to buy a health insurance
plan whose cost will grow at twice the rate of growth of their
incomes, claiming more and more of the disposable income of
individuals and families; and
   WHEREAS, The PPACA creation of 50 state exchanges with 50
different sets of regulations will do nothing to lower health care
costs; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA conscripts the states as its indentured servants in
the federal health care takeover as they set up and operate
insurance exchanges, determine eligibility, oversee insurance plans
for compliance with federal dictates, and then to impose a new tax on
health insurers to fund the new state exchange bureaucracy; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA confers an exclusive franchise to the federal
Office of Personnel Management to offer two taxpayer-subsidized, "too
big to fail" health insurance plans on all the state exchanges,
which will allow the federal government, through this so-called
"Public Option," to underprice private health plans, gradually
undermine the ability of private sector providers to provide care,
and thereby ensure that freedom-loving Americans will be forced to
receive their medical care from a paternalistic, government-run, "no
choices for you," single-payer bureaucracy; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA, in a clear assertion that federal politicians and
unelected federal employees at the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services know better than hard-working individuals, families,
and employers on how to design an appropriate health insurance plan,
will drive up health insurance premiums and reduce wages by mandating
that health plans cover specified medical services under the
economically illiterate and fairyland fiction that these services
will be "free" to the enrollee; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA, by giving a small number unelected federal
employees at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services the
broad regulatory power to mandate that every "essential health
benefit package" cover specified services, takes the important
decision about what type of medical benefits would provide the most
financial protection out of the hands of hard-working individuals,
families, and employers; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA empowers the United States Preventive Services Task
Force, the same unelected group that in November 2009 recommended
that women ages 40-49 should not get routine mammograms because they
are not cost effective, to decide, without any public hearings or
comments, whether a whole range of preventive services and screenings
will be covered by health insurance plans and which ones will not be
covered; and
   WHEREAS, According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, the
PPACA mandate that health plans provide "free" preventive services
will, given the growing physician shortage and the fact that one out
of every five Americans currently lives in an underserved area, force
family doctors to spend all their time delivering care to basically
healthy people and make it more difficult for those patients with
more urgent or chronic needs to obtain medical care; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA, by federalizing the power to create an "essential
health benefits package," provides an open invitation to special
interest groups to exert pressure on unelected federal employees at
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and to lobby and
provide even larger campaign contributions to members of Congress in
order to expand the scope of the federal minimum coverage
requirements at the expense of hard-working individuals; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA, by giving Congress the power to year by year add
new and expensive benefits to the "essential health benefits package,"
can only be seen as the "Undemocratic Incumbent Protection Act" as
skyrocketing campaign contributions by rent-seeking special interest
groups will go to those U.S. Representatives and Senators who do the
bidding of lobbyists rather than to congressional challengers,
thereby undermining free and fair elections; and
   WHEREAS, Even with the federally imposed individual mandate and
IRS fines on citizens, the CBO estimated that in 10 years there would
still be 23 million Americans without health insurance because of
the law's powerful financial incentives on individuals to only buy
the expensive, government-designed health insurance plan when they
actually need medical care; and
   WHEREAS, According to Edmund F. Haislmaier, Senior Research Fellow
at the Heritage Foundation, the PPACA mandate on all health insurers
to meet a specified minimum loss ratio (MLR) -- the percentage of
the premium dollar that is spent on claims versus administration --
will reduce health insurer competition, raise premiums, and result in
more erroneous and fraudulent claim payments; and
   WHEREAS, Studies have concluded that those individuals who
purchase consumer-directed health care plans like a tax-preferred
Health Savings Account (HSA) coupled with a high deductible health
insurance policy are more likely to track expenses (63 percent to 43
percent), save for the future (47 percent to 18 percent), search for
information on physician quality (20 percent to 14 percent), and
participate and see results from wellness programs like weight loss,
fitness, and smoking cessation. PPACA's exchange and MLR rules could
end this cost-effective option for millions of hard-working
Americans; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA's arbitrary MLR regulations will result in cuts to
insurance agent and broker commissions and thus hinder the ability of
consumers to obtain expert advice regarding what type of health
insurance plan would best fit their family's needs; and
   WHEREAS, While a reformed health care system would give consumers
enhanced power to reward health care providers and insurers that
deliver a higher level of quality of care at lower cost, PPACA is
accelerating a wave of consolidations, creating larger insurers,
hospital systems, and physician groups which will, according to a
Wall Street Journal analysis, lead to higher health care costs for
consumers; and
   WHEREAS, In a Health Affairs article published on February 25,
2010, researchers warn that, based on California's experience,
consolidation of provider organizations as a result of PPACA "could
lead to higher rates for private payers" which are ultimately passed
on to individuals and families; and
   WHEREAS, According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, the
perverse incentives in PPACA relating to insurers actually provide
perverse incentives for insurers to overprovide medical services to
essentially healthy people to keep them enrolled while underproviding
care to the sick to discourage them from enrolling and to encourage
the departure of the ones they already have in the insurance plan;
and
   WHEREAS, PPACA, by depositing 16 million people in the failed and
fraud-ridden Medicaid program and accelerating the early retirement
of doctors, nurses, and other health professionals by their
reimbursement policies will result in 900,
                000 additional emergency room visits every year and
longer wait times for Americans seeking emergency care; and
   WHEREAS, While 70 percent of all health care costs are a direct
result of unhealthy behavior -- one in five Americans smoke and three
in ten are obese -- the antiquated PPACA model will further separate
people from the financial consequences of their poor behavioral
decisions and thereby force people who exercise personal and
financial responsibility to subsidize the skyrocketing health
insurance premiums and costs of those who behave irresponsibly; and
   WHEREAS, Despite a 2008 analysis by a Kaiser Permanente researcher
published in Health Affairs that found that states that enacted
guaranteed issue and community rating mandates, like New York,
Washington, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Maine, dramatically increased
premiums in the individual market and reduced access to care, PPACA
now imposes this failed social engineering experiment on the entire
nation; and
   WHEREAS, While "comparative effectiveness research" can lead to,
when there is a strong and uncompromised physician-to-patient
relationship, improved and cost-effective care for individual
patients, the enactment of PPACA will increase governmental spending
to 52 percent of all medical bills and a perennially bankrupt federal
government will use "comparative effective research" to ration care,
especially care provided to seniors; and
   WHEREAS, While an injured patient must wait an average of five
years to have his or her malpractice case resolved and nearly 60
cents out of every dollar spent goes to lawyers and administrative
costs, President Obama and the Democratic Congress didn't lift a
finger to encourage medical malpractice reform; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA is based on enacting on $528.5 billion in Medicare
cuts -- one-half of the cost of the new law -- not in order to
address the annual $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit, nor to pay
for the $5 trillion in debt added in a single presidential term, or
to better ensure the solvency of the Medicare program for seniors,
but to create a new, reckless, and financially unsustainable
entitlement program; and
   WHEREAS, The number of seniors who need more medical care is
expected to soar to 72 million by 2020, nearly double today's number.
President Obama's own Office of the Actuary at CMS estimated the
Medicare provider cuts contained in PPACA would result in 15 percent
of Part A providers becoming unprofitable within 10 years, 25 percent
by 2030, and 40 percent by 2050, which will force seniors to
increasingly rely on receiving basic care from community health
centers and public hospitals; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA creates the Independent Payment Advisory Board
(IPAB), a body composed of 15 unelected members appointed by the
President, which will, starting on January 15, 2014, impose further
reimbursement cuts on physicians and thereby accelerate the physician
exodus from participating in Medicare, making it more difficult for
seniors on Medicare to establish a trusting and long-term
relationship with a physician and only worsen the ongoing problem of
emergency room overcrowding; and
   WHEREAS, While almost two-thirds of research on new medicines
approved in the last 10 years was performed in the United States by
the 650,000 Americans who work for pharmaceutical companies, PPACA
gives the IPAB the power to reduce Medicare payments for innovative
and life-saving pharmaceutical products to achieve short-term savings
at the expense of long-term investment in the health of Americans;
and
   WHEREAS, In December 2009, three months before the enactment of
PPACA, CMS Chief Actuary Richard Foster warned lawmakers -- but was
ignored -- that the proposed long-term care entitlement program
called Community Living Assistance Services and Support (CLASS) was
financially untenable and would ultimately result in an "insurance
death spiral" in the program; and
   WHEREAS, President Obama's own Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission
noted in its report that the CLASS program will "require large
general revenue transfers or else collapse under its own weight"; and

   WHEREAS, Former Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, a Democrat
from North Dakota, called CLASS "a Ponzi scheme of the first order,
the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of"; and
   WHEREAS, The Obama Administration, despite clear evidence of the
financial failure of CLASS, refuses to support the repeal of the
program; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA will, according to the CBO and CMS, increase
federal spending on Medicaid by between $75 billion and $100 billion
per year at a time when the U.S. government must borrow 40 cents out
of every dollar, much of this from foreign countries, to pay for
ongoing federal programs; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA will shift 16 million people into Medicaid, a
government-run program that fosters dependency on government, lowers
participation in the workforce, is associated with worse medical
outcomes than private health insurance, and is not accepted by almost
one-half of physicians in American metropolitan areas; and
   WHEREAS, While Medicaid is a growing fiscal problem for states,
accounting for 21 percent of state spending, second only to
education, PPACA will make it more difficult for states to spend
their revenues on programs that meet the priority needs of their
residents; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA will, through its unconstitutional, coercive, and
$20 billion unfunded mandate on state governments, force states to
cut expenditures for schools, public safety, and other vital general
fund programs and/or raise taxes, thereby impeding job and wage
growth for private and public sector workers; and
   WHEREAS, Under PPACA, most of the coverage expansion will occur in
the government-run Medicaid program. In a recent poll, 67 percent of
primary care physicians said that the new Medicaid enrollees would
not be able to find a primary care physician in their area; and
   WHEREAS, Because government-run Medicaid payments to doctors and
hospitals are so low, PPACA will only accelerate the cost-shift of
higher premiums for those with private health insurance; and
   WHEREAS, Because PPACA will lower reimbursement payments to
physicians and empower federal politicians and government employees
to "practice medicine," many of America's best and brightest students
will not undergo the expense and many years of training to become a
physician; and
   WHEREAS, PPACA bypasses the long-standing federal Hyde Amendment,
which ensures that no federal funds are used for elective abortion,
by facilitating federal tax credits for private health care plans
that cover abortions and that are offered through the health
insurance exchanges; and
   WHEREAS, While George Washington wrote, "The conscientious
scruples of all men should be treated with great delicacy and
tenderness; and it is my wish and desire, that the laws may always be
extensively accommodated to them," President Obama has used his
authority under PPACA to force religious institutions that serve the
common good -- schools, hospitals, and charities -- to violate their
deeply held beliefs by forcing them to pay for health insurance
coverage that includes subsidized contraception, morning-after
abortion drugs, and sterilization; and
   WHEREAS, Although the Obama Administration's edict on who
qualifies to be a "religious minister" was struck down by a 9-0 vote
by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Hosanna-Tabor case, the Obama
Administration now asserts the power under PPACA to decide what
organizations qualify as a "religious employer" and which ones do not
for purposes of imposing the federal health insurance mandates,
further eroding the protections of Americans under the First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; -- and
   WHEREAS, The repeal of one provision of the PPACA law, which would
have imposed draconian paperwork requirements on millions of small
businesses, represents a good start; now, therefore, be it
   Resolved by the Assembly and the Senate of the State of
California, jointly, That the legislature calls on President of the
United States and the United States Congress, as a first step, to
repeal the 2,700-page PPACA because it is incompatible with the U.S.
Constitution's fundamental principles of liberty, limited government,
federalism, fair elections, and respect for the free exercise of
religious belief, its ill-conceived framework is already putting new
costs on hard-working Americans, and its "put government first"
structure impedes the urgent need to enact real, consumer-directed
health care reform that ensures accessible, high quality, secure, and
affordable health care for all Americans; and be it further
   Resolved, That, as Alexander Hamilton wrote, "A sacred respect for
the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy
of a free government," federal, state, and local officials should
enact real health care reform consistent with the U.S. Constitution
and state constitutions that puts the citizen and his or her family
at the center of our health care system; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Legislature calls on the Congress, one that has
as more faith in the common sense and self-reliant character of the
American people over the "wisdom" of the Washington, D.C.
aristocracy, to use freedom-based principles to enact reforms that
empower individuals, families, and associations of free Americans to
decide how to best to spend their money in health care decisions,
facilitate access to high-quality, affordable health insurance, lower
the cost of health care and thereby boost worker wages, reduce the
number of uninsured, make health insurance more portable and secure,
and support life-saving innovation in medical treatment; and be it
further
   Resolved, That the Legislature calls on the Congress to use its
lawful authority under the U.S. Constitution to reform federal tax
law, which currently undercuts the portability of health insurance as
Americans move from job to job, creates escalating medical
inflations that kills jobs and cuts wage growth, contributes to the
number of Americans who cannot afford health insurance, creates
dependence of the uninsured on crowded emergency rooms for routine
care and dependence on government programs, and unfairly and
regressively confers more tax benefits on employed individuals as one'
s income rises; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Legislature calls on the Congress to enact
federal tax reform, through an appropriate use of a universal tax
deduction, tax credit, or vouchers for low-income persons, to enable
Americans to own and control their own health insurance policies as
they currently own and control their automobile, life, and homeowners'
insurance policies and to keep their health insurance policies when
their change jobs, lose their job, or start a new business; and be it
further
   Resolved, That the Legislature calls on the Congress to enact
federal tax reform in order to shift health care decision making out
of the hands of federal and state politicians, lobbyists, and
government employees, and instead empower individual citizens and
families with greater control over their health care dollars to buy
the kind of health insurance policy and long-term care policy that
best fits their needs and their ability to contract with medical
professionals that they trust; and be if further
   Resolved, That the Legislature calls on the Congress to use its
lawful authority under the Constitution to knock down anticompetitive
barriers erected by federal and state politicians and lobbyists and
allow Americans to buy health insurance across state lines, thereby
empowering citizens to financially reward providers that perform
well; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Legislature calls on the Congress to allow
small businesses to voluntarily join together and increase their
purchasing power through association health plans; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Legislature calls on the Congress to lift all
restrictions on employers so they can offer lower premiums to those
employees who practice healthier lifestyles; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Legislature calls on the Congress, instead of
imposing top-down rationing of care to seniors, to use the principles
of competition and choice to ensure the survival of Medicare for
future generations of Americans; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Legislature calls on the Congress, instead of
expanding Medicaid and handcuffing states with new rules, to reform
Medicaid by giving each state the authority to craft innovative ways
to increase the quality of care provided to beneficiaries, reduce
fraud, save taxpayer dollars, and shift beneficiaries from dependence
on government to independence and the ability to obtain their health
care coverage from the private sector; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Legislature calls on Congress to alter or
repeal all rules and regulations to unshackle states to enact
policies that best meet the needs of their local populations; and be
it further
   Resolved, That the California Legislature support and back up
these federal reforms to create a consumer-directed and
patient-centered health care system by reforming state law to confer
the same tax benefits for individuals and families who purchase a
Health Savings Account coupled with a high deductible insurance
policy as that currently enjoyed by the citizens of 48 others states;
eliminate costly regulations on health care providers and hospitals;
ensure the every citizen with a preexisting medical condition is
able to purchase an affordable health insurance policy from a
high-risk pool; allow individuals and families a greater selection of
choices regarding what benefits they want to pay for and the
selection of high quality providers; and ensure that institutions of
higher education focus on training physicians and other health care
professionals to meet the health care needs of future generations of
Californians; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of
this resolution to the author for appropriate distribution, to the
President and Vice President of the United States, to the Speaker of
the House of Representatives, to the Majority Leader of the Senate,
and to each Senator and Representative from California in the
Congress of the United States.