Rep. Ron Paul Introduces Legislation to Repeal Individual Mandate

During the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC), Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) received thunderous applause when he announced his intention to introduce legislation that would allow anyone to opt out of mandatory government-approved health insurance,

   There’s one piece of legislation that I’m going to introduce, it’s going to be one page long. It will be to remove the mandate so you don’t have to participate if you don’t want to.

This week, Ron Paul officially introduced H.R 4995 End the Mandate Act in the House. Text of the legislation can be found on the Library of Congress’ website. Ron Paul recently appeared on Fox News’ “Happening Now” with Jon Scott to further explain his legislation,

    I’m going to narrow it down, I want to get rid of one item to concentrate on because I think it’s the worse part and that is the mandate saying that you don’t have a choice anymore the driving of everyone into the system…so I want to keen in on one issue legalize freedom of choice, legalize the private option… I want to concentrate on the principles that in a free society you have to at least allow people the freedom to opt out of a compulsory system that is imposed on you by government.

It’s obvious that most lawmakers did not bother to read the entirety of the over 2,300 page unconstitutional and costly health care reform bill written in legalese and filled with sweetheart deals.  As Nancy Pelosi now famously said, “we have to pass the [health care] bill so that we can find out what’s in it.” Therefore, it is refreshing for a politician to introduce a one page bill that is simple and to the point. Clearly, no part of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to force every citizen to purchase health insurance or pay a fine to the federal government.  It’s simply tyrannical to force someone to use their hard-earned money to buy a product against their will.

According to a recent Rasmussen Report, 58% of Americans polled want to repeal the new national health care plan. Without question, repealing the entire health care bill will be challenging and it will take a lot of hard work. Yesterday, it was apparent by the amount of activists at the Tea Party Tax Day Protests around the nation that we have the dedication and passion necessary to repeal this massive bill. Concurrently, we are also focusing our efforts on taking it down piece by piece. 

While some politicians have switched their views on health care legislation based on public opinion, licensed medical doctor Ron Paul has always been an outspoken advocate of free market approaches to health care reform. Just for fun, here’s a video of Ron Paul discussing national health care reform while running for president on the Libertarian ticket in 1988. While this video was filmed before some of his young enthusiastic supporters were born, his arguments for free market health care reform remain exactly the same.

 

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