Baron Hill to Propose Constitutional Amendment for Right to Health Care

Back in January, Baron Hill caught some flack on this blog and elsewhere for proclaiming that health care was a constitutional right.

Before, when he was campaigning to be sent back to Congress, Mr. Hill proclaimed that he thought health care was a right.

Once elected, he quickly dispensed with limiting himself to this opinion and apparently found a right to health care somewhere within the United States Constitution and its amendments.

Others could not locate this constitutional right to health care, which Hill (a constitutional scholar without peer) was alone in discovering.

His staff probably couldn't find it either.

They looked for a good two and a half months and couldn't find it anywhere.

The Constitution and its amendments comprise a massive document, taking almost two dozen printed pages (depending on type face), so it was a long and arduous search.

It seems that Baron Hill couldn't find it in the constitution himself once he actually started looking for it a second time.

Perhaps Mr. Hill found it once and forgot where it was, since he claimed to have already found it and it is obviously so difficult for others to locate.

Not able to find it again, Baron Hill has now told the News & Tribune's David Mann (a great copy-and-paster of Hill's press releases) that he will propose that the constitution be amended to create a right to health care.

One must, of course, wonder why an amendment would be necessary if health care is already a constitutional right, as Mr. Hill has already proclaimed several times in the past.

But assuming it isn't, since nobody else could find it except Baron, that raises raises new questions.

How would such an amendment would be implemented in practice?

Baron has admitted that he doesn't know.

Instead, he would propose the separate creation of a government commission to ponder just that question.

The government needs more commissions to study things, I guess.

I am obviously not as great a constitutional scholar as Baron Hill (after all, I couldn't find a right to health care in the Constitution, and he claims to have already found it), but I tend to think that you should have an idea of the consequences of a constitutional amendment and how it will be implemented before you go proposing it.

Maybe the commission should precede the amendment, not go alongside it as "companion legislation."

Why amend the Constitution?

Baron has a track record of voting against amending the Constitution.

He has voted against amending it to ban flag burning.

He has voted against amending it to define marriage.

In the campaign, he said he was against amending the Constitution.

Why is he in favor of it now, particularly when he has claimed to have found a right to health care in the Constitution already?

Why even amend the Constitution to insert something that you have repeatedly said is in it as it is?

Hill will propose universal healthcare
By DAVID MANN
David.Mann@newsandtribune.com

Universal health care has been a staple of U.S. political debate since at least the Truman administration. And it could be moving back to the national stage before the end of the year, with Indiana Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., at the helm.

In an interview Friday, Hill said he’s only a few months away from proposing an amendment that would put health care among constitutional rights — right alongside free speech or freedom of religion.

Hill’s plan isn’t exactly the kind of universal health care that liberal Democrats such as Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich have introduced in recent months, which would provide free coverage to everyone in the country. But it is a step in that direction.

Hill’s legislation — for now known as the Right to Care Act — would establish health care as a right by amending the constitution, but it does not provide any kind of direction as to how people should be covered.

He plans to file companion legislation establishing a health care commission to decide that. The commission would investigate various means of providing universal health care — both through private business and public administration — and make a recommendation to Congress.

Such an amendment ties back to the campaign in two ways: For one, Hill said then — when gay marriage was the debate — that he didn’t want to amend the constitution. Secondly, one of his major talking points was that health care should not be considered a privilege but a right.

Asked about those two things Friday, the congressman said that a constitutional amendment is necessary in this case, because of the amount of special interest involvement. Any time health care is debated in this country, special interest groups get overly involved in the debate, he said.

He points to former First Lady Hillary Clinton’s 1993 health care proposal as an example of that. The pharmaceutical companies have too much of a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, he said. An amendment would force the country to act on the issue because it couldn’t just be ignored.

As to whether or not such an amendment could pass is a different question altogether. Tom Wolf, emeritus professor of political science at IU Southeast, admits that he is a supporter of Hill, but has his doubts about the amendment.

The chance of such legislation passing is remote, Wolf said. This debate goes back more than a half century. And it hasn’t been acted on for two reasons, Wolf said. First, it’s “socialism” — which is a poisoned word that people fear. And second, because there is a question of who would pay for it.

If health care was established as a right for all Americans, the employers would be required to foot the bill. Therefore, all the pro-business lobbyists are going to come out against it, Wolf said. If the government were to pay for it, business might support it because it would take the burden off of them.

Hill said he’s not necessarily opposed to either idea. He’d like to see some sort of private for-profit solution to be proposed.

That would at least salvage the system the U.S. has in place now. But a universal single-payer program would not be out of the question if private business can’t come up with something creditable, he said. Leaving it open ended gives everyone a chance to come to the table.

The commission part of the equation is still being drafted. The constitutional amendment has already been written, Hill said. About 12 other members of Congress have given Hill some kind of commitment of support.

He’d like to get that number up to around 50 people before introducing it to Congress as a whole. That would likely be around June, he said.