House Council Backs McCollum's Suit

Rep. Eric Eisnaugle, R-Orlando, brought a bill to the House Health & Family Services Policy Council supporting Attorney General Bill McCollums proposed litigation against the federal government for forcing individuals to puchase health care. The measure reported favorably through the committee, passing on a 7 to 5 party line vote.

Eisnaugle said, Bill McCollum has recognized the right of all Floridians to make their own health care decisions.

Individual health care mandates are unconstitutional and inconsistent with the principles this country was founded on," Eisnaugle said. The right to make our own health care decisions are one of the most important rights we have.

Rep. Peter Fitzgerald, D-Sarasota, said that there were challenges to Social Security in 1937 and to Medicaid in 1966 and 1967 on the grounds of individual mandates. Fitzgerald said the Supreme Court rejected the challenges. The constitutional argument is groundless, Fitzgerald said. This is fundamentally a political bill.

Referring to the debates over state rights in the nineteenth century, Fitzgerald said, There is no constitutional argument unless you believe John C. Calhoun was right instead of Abraham Lincoln.