While today’s elections include several landmark statewide initiatives ranging from marriage equality to marijuana legalization, five states have also tacked purely symbolic measures onto their ballots purely to oppose Obamacare.
The Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff notes that — despite federal law’s supremacy over state law, and despite the fact that the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare’s constitutionality this summer — five states’ ballots include measures to invalidate Obamacare provisions. Wyoming’s Amendment A, Florida’s Amendment 1, Alabama’s Amendment 6, and Montana’s Measure LR-122 would all prohibit state residents and employers from being forced to purchase insurance or participate in any externally-imposed health care system. In Missouri, Proposition E seeks to prevent the state from instituting its own health insurance exchange.
But even if any of the first four measures to amend those states’ constitutions passed, all Americans would still be subject to federal Obamacare provisions, including the individual and employer mandates. And Obamacare already accounts for states that choose not to create their own statewide exchanges by requiring the federal government to set up “federally-facilitated exchanges” for them in 2014.
All five initiatives are totally ineffective, amounting to little more than political posturing against President Obama’s health reform law.
