JEFFERSON CITY
, Mo. -- Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a key provision of President Barack Obama's health care
law, sending a clear message of discontent to Washington and Democrats less than 100 days before the midterm elections.

With about 90 percent of the vote counted late Tuesday, nearly three-quarters of voters backed a ballot measure, Proposition C, that would prohibit the government from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them for not having it.

The Missouri law would conflict with a federal requirement that most people have health insurance or face penalties starting in 2014.

Tuesday's vote was seen as largely symbolic because federal law generally trumps state law. But it was also seen as a sign of growing voter disillusionment with federal policies and a show of strength by conservatives and the tea party movement.

"To us, it symbolized everything," said Annette Read, a tea party participant from suburban St. Louis who quit her online retail job to lead a yearlong campaign for the Missouri ballot measure. "The entire frustration in the country ... how our government has misspent, how they haven't listened to the people, this measure in general encompassed all of that."

Missouri's ballot also featured primaries for U.S. Senate, Congress and numerous state legislative seats. But at many polling places, voters said they were most passionate about the health insurance referendum.

"I believe that the general public has been duped about the benefits of the health care proposal," said Mike Sampson of Jefferson City, an independent emergency management contractor, who voted for the proposition. "My guess is federal law will in fact supersede state law, but we need to send a message to the folks in Washington, D.C., that people in the hinterlands are not happy."

Legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana and Virginia have passed similar statutes, and voters in Arizona and Oklahoma will vote on such measures as state constitutional amendments in November. But Missouri was the first state to challenge aspects of the federal law in a referendum.

The intent of the federal requirement is to broaden the pool of healthy people covered by insurers, thus holding down premiums that otherwise would rise because of separate provisions prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with poor health or pre-existing conditions.

But the insurance requirement has been one of the most contentious parts of the new federal law. Public officials in well over a dozen states, including Missouri, have filed lawsuits claiming Congress overstepped its constitutional authority by requiring citizens to buy health insurance.

Federal courts are expected to weigh in well before the insurance requirement takes effect about whether the federal health care overhaul is constitutional.

The Missouri Hospital Association spent $400,000 warning people that passage of the ballot measure could increase hospitals' costs for treating the uninsured, but there was little opposition to the measure from either grass-roots organizations or from the unions and consumer groups that backed the federal overhaul.

Some Missouri voters who opposed the ballot measure cited a potential cost-shift to those who have insurance if some people are allowed to continue visiting emergency rooms without insurance. Other opponents of Missouri's ballot measure said they wanted to give Obama's health care plan a chance to work.

"I don't think people should be walking around sick," said Kathy Ward, a 57-year-old Columbia nurse, who voted against Missouri's law. "The fact remains, people have the right to have health care, and they should get it. It help makes a healthier society."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/03/missouri-votes-block-health-insurance-mandate/

WOOOOHOOOO thats 2 now... 48 to go

this will go the way of the mandatory car insurance suits,,,,even if it is knocked out on principle,, there is still government funding to PERSUADE the states to do whats best and most economical

How does the State of Arizona get away with MANDATING that I have to buy auto insurance?

But we don't pay for an uninsured vehicle accident - we DO pay for all those in need to have medical treatment.

That was the attraction of healthcare reform but it started at the top. THE LAST THING that should have happened was to require that all people have some kind of health insurance.

THE FIRST THING that should have happened was a serious look at health insurance and it possibly the creation of State Insurance enchanges that would allow poeple to volunterily attain insurance at a manageable rate.

STEPS in a prcess, especially in a process that is to extend to the entire population would have been much more logical.

I'm still leaning toward the Republican idea of repealing the healthcare bill with the intent of starting it over - incrementally.

the only problem there is the STATES were NOT moving to do that

ID have been just as glad if the states proposed it, but they didnt, so its at the federal level instead

persuasion, the feds could not mandate everyone have auto insurance, so the next step was to withhold funds for making the roads safer UNLESS states took the steps to make sure their drivers were insured,,,,

much like the funding hospitals receive can be hampered if the feds decide the states arent doing enough to ensure those costs are covered,,,

It is what it is. The voters had their say. Obama, Reid and Pelosi better pay close attention because if they fight to overturn what the voters want, then they're done.

Nuh-UNNNNNNNHHHHHH ... BO'rock sez we gotz us FITTY-SEB'M states ... 'memember when he sed dat durin' the campaign ... ?

One down, fourty nine to go. It's amazing that so many states are lining up to repel a bill that has been passed.

I voted that day. It wasn't such a big win.

Only approximately 20% of Missouri voters came out to vote that day.

Why? One reason was that it was only the primaries and the other - many people didn't take Prop. C seriously. They thought it was a waste of time to vote on it because it will never pass. It was also 101 degrees here that day. We weren't given much information about it. I didn't even know about it until the week before the election.

We had a good laugh about how Fox was running with this. Hardly anybody came out to vote! There was only one other person voting when I went to vote.

REPEAL is the only solution.

'De-funding' is smoke 'n mirrors, 'cuz another 'congress' can put the money right back into it.

REPEAL eliminates it.

Actually, car insurance is a property issue. The state can maintain that an automobile is a moving piece of property, which has the ability to destroy the private property of other citizens. In this manner they are able to force individuals to purchase auto insurance, at least for long enough to renew your tags.


Health insurance being mandated is a completely different affair. An individual in this country should (in theory) have the right of self-determination. As such, we should be allowed to determine what, if any, degree of health care we wish to maintain. The Declaration of Independence talked of a Right to Life, it didn't say a long one, or a healthy one. It also talked of Liberty, and that Happiness had to be pursued, not granted.

It is taking away my personal liberty to force me to spend my hard earned money on a private company. Make no mistake, this isn't a tax that generates health care through a government agency, this is the government forcing me to give my money to a privately owned, for-profit corporation, nothing more. Even in doing so, it does not guarantee that I would receive the best possible health care by doing so. I won't even be guaranteed that I wouldn't have to pay out of pocket for health care expenses either. This is just the government forcing me to pay the salaries of individuals in the insurance industry, mainly because the product they sell isn't worth buying in the first place and they are only propping up the industry.

Government mandated purchase of private health insurance is a direct violation of my right to self determination. It goes against the principle of relieving me of my private property (my earnings) without just compensation. It is not a government run system, much like when the government threatens to withhold road funds if auto insurance isn't mandated, so they have no real "funding" to hold over a states head. Plus, it is a violation of the Tenth Amendment to do so in this case. Roadways are specifically stated in the Constitution as something the Federal government has to maintain, health of the populace is not.

All it 'guarantees' is 'access' to some unthinking, unelected, and unconcerned bureaucrat with the power to make a life-or-death decision about your medical needs and care based on a completely arbitrary and 'politically correct' age-adjusted table that tells them a younger illegal alien is going to benefit more from a particular treatment than you will because you're too old. End of story.

They will either Repel it or get it before the Supreme Court and the court striking it down for being UN-constitutional.