Feds Seek 'Dictatorial Powers' on Health Care

Feds Seek 'Dictatorial Powers' on Health Care

Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Saturday, Dec. 15, 2001

WASHINGTON – The federal government is pushing your state legislature to give your governor and health officials sweeping powers that threaten your freedoms.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) sent out a "patient alert” Thursday to its members warning that the so-called Model Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA) would, in fact, give the governor "unprecedented dictatorial powers in the event he decided to declare a ‘public health emergency.’”

The model legislation is being sent out to the 50 states by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

"Your association and its members need to be informed about the implications of this Act,” warns Dr. Jane Orient, AAPS executive director. "It would give the governor, in effect, the right to practice medicine and force physicians to participate in the examination and treatment of patients according to state-dictated protocol – under pain of criminal sanctions.”

The measure, as AAPS sees it, is loaded with privacy and civil-liberties booby traps. Among them:

1. Unrestricted power of the governor to declare an emergency at his own discretion, without consulting anyone, and the legislature would have no right to interfere for at least 60 days. And even after that deadline, a two-thirds vote of both chambers would be needed to block the dictatorial powers.

2. The ability of the government to take over private facilities, including hospitals and clinics, and to seize any property claimed necessary in an emergency.

3. The right to impose rationing, quotas and price controls, and to control the use or transportation of any item deemed essential, under the direction of un-elected political appointees acting with virtually complete immunity.

4. The authority to suspend any rule or regulation that hindered the program.

Forced Vaccinations

5. The criminalization of refusal by physicians to serve or by patients to accept vaccination prescribed by the governor or his deputies.

AAPS is not alone in opposing MEHPA, which is already being considered in several states, including Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, Minnesota, Illinois and California.

The irony that this proposal is being sent out by the feds under a conservative Republican administration is not lost on Paul Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation.

The former Wisconsinite and longtime conservative icon notes, apparently as much in sorrow as in anger, that HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, former Wisconsin governor, "whom I have considered a friend for 30 years,” has, alas, "gone native.”

Going native in conservative-speak defines a decent conservative who comes to Washington and ends up adopting the inside-the-Beltway mentality as his own.

"Thompson,” Weyrich says of the man who was a reformer and strong advocate of welfare reform in his own state, "has done many questionable things since taking over from another Wisconsinite, Donna Shalala,” but MEHPA is "the most troubling yet.”

Fortunately, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group of state lawmakers around the country who make it their business to raise red flags on ideas such as this one, has done an analysis of MEPHA.

The council says MEPHA is being pushed with the assistance of the federal Centers for Disease Control, the National Conference of State Legislatures (whose left-leaning agenda prompted the founding of ALEC as a counterweight), the National Governors Association (NGA, which relies largely on analysis by Beltway staffers), the National Association of City and County Health Officers, and other liberal bureaucratic groups.

There’s an old saying in Washington that if you want to find out why certain things happen, just "follow the money.”

Bribed With Taxpayers' Own Money

MEPHA is not likely to be an exception to that rule. Whenever the federal government wants the states to behave in a certain way, word goes out from Washington that those states that comply with the feds' wishes will be eligible for additional dollars.

"Bingo!” says Weyrich. "That is the magic word.” At that point, watch them fall into line, unless you and others head them off at the pass. An outraged public, if persistent enough, can serve as an effective offset to the lure of federal dollars. Every ambitious politician lives in constant fear of rejection at the polls.

ALEC says this legislation "strips individuals and families of their rights and liberties at the expense of government” and unnecessarily duplicates state natural-disaster statutes.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons cites the Institute for Health Freedom, which recommends that citizens concerned about the proposed legislation contact their state officials (governor, representatives and senators), attorneys general and local officials (city or town and county officials).

They should also contact Secretary Thompson.

During the holidays when your state lawmakers are home might be the time to buttonhole them before your legislature goes into session, as most will in early January.

When plans such as this are put on the table, those backing it usually count on you and others being asleep at the switch. AAPS says that only citizens at the grassroots have it within their power to disabuse them of that notion.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Bush Administration

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