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Health Insurance Mandate

Health Insurance Mandate - Voters in Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma will have the chance Tuesday to repudiate the new health care law’s keystone provision, one that requires almost everyone to have health insurance or face a tax penalty beginning in 2014.

Ballots in the three states include proposed amendments to the states' constitutions that would prohibit the enforcement of the individual mandate and other provisions of the law. They echo a measure that Missouri voters approved by more than 70 percent in August. Legislatures in several other states, including Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana and Virginia, have also passed state laws with similar language.

But the ballot initiatives have set off a fierce debate: If they succeed, will they have any effect?

Critics of the referenda say they’re nothing more than a political gesture, misleading voters to believe that amending their state constitutions would allow them to opt out of the health care law. Given that the Supreme Court will likely have the final say on the constitutionality of the law before 2014, the public's vote wouldn't impact the national law, they say.

"To me it's more of a polling statement," said Elizabeth McGlynn, an associate director at the RAND Corp., a nonprofit research organization based in California that has no position on the amendments. "It's not clear to me in this case that the federal law wouldn’t override state mandate … that will be something the courts decide. … It's not really clear to me what that does at the state levels.”

Proponents argue that the amendments have a strategic function beyond the scope of individual states.

"As more and more states pass these kinds of amendments … it's going to embolden legislative action to repeal or defund legislative provisions" of the federal health law, said Robert Alt, deputy director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.

Health Insurance Mandate
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