IFF goal: Affordable healthcare for all

There is much wrong information being circulated about Proposition 2 and the ensuing Constitutional challenge, of which I am the plaintiff. Most of this misinformation has been conveniently encapsulated in a recent column “OPINION: Dig a Deep Hole for Prop 2 Lawsuit” by Steve Cameron.

The Petition to the Supreme Court says nothing about the wisdom of expanding our health insurance safety net to include able bodied, financially secure individuals based solely on income. The Petition does point out that Proposition 2 attempts to grant powers to the executive branch and the Federal bureaucracy that are reserved by our state Constitution for the Idaho Legislature.

Mr. Cameron’s position is: Law be damned! It’s “what the people wanted”, which reminds one of Leo Tolstoy’s observation “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” If Mr. Cameron’s populist supremacy theory was right then Idaho’s Constitutional Marriage Definition (one man one woman) which passed by over 63 percent of the popular vote would today be the law of the land because, as Mr. Cameron claims, it was clearly “what the people wanted.”

The initiative process gives the voters the same powers as the Legislature, which includes the power to pass un-Constitutional laws and have them struck down. Any Idaho elector can ask the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of a voter initiative which, even the editor of the Press agrees, is a good thing to do in the long run.

Not letting facts get in the way of a faulty opinion, Mr. Cameron goes on to claim the Idaho Freedom Foundation doesn’t “give a damn whether people have access to health care.” It is easily provable that nothing could be further from the truth.

The Idaho Freedom Foundation has been fighting for nearly a decade to make healthcare truly affordable for every Idahoan. IFF has been fighting against well-funded lobbyists and their “useful idiots” that parrot industry sound bites. IFF was successful in its efforts to strike down the prohibition on selling insurance across state lines and to protect Direct Primary Care (Concierge Medicine for all) from over-regulation.

The typical Idaho family spends over $20,000 every year on health INSURANCE, either directly, through their employer, or courtesy of you the taxpayer. Of that only about $7,000 goes to the actual health CARE that you would purchase given the option. Every year on average more than $13,000 from every Idaho family is stolen and wasted on a health industry bureaucracy that has been twisted by perverse incentives to benefit everyone BUT the citizen.

Every year you could buy a new car for the amount of money sucked out of your family’s wallet. Those hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in the cash accounts of Big Insurance came from someone and that someone is you.

The Idaho Freedom Foundation has championed Individual Development Accounts that would allow unused health care dollars to accumulate in the citizen’s own account rather than being flushed down the Big Insurance drain.

IFF lobbies to make it easier for doctors to give charity care in their own offices rather than being forced to use a clinic and has promoted community based bottom up, rather than big government top down, charity care for the poor and indigent.

For years the Idaho Freedom Foundation has been fighting against the myopic, low resolution thinking that grows monopolies, increases costs, decreases service and drives our healthcare system to crisis all in the name of “helping” when really the opposite is happening.

The reality is that the Idaho Freedom Foundation works every day to improve every Idahoan’s access to quality healthcare at an affordable cost.

While I am not a doctor, if Mr. Cameron wishes to see reality he should make an appointment with his proctologist.

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Brent Regan is a Coeur d’Alene resident and chairman of the Idaho Freedom Foundation board.