The Freedom Bulletin

Although I’m planning to vote for a Republican in the U.S. Senate special election, I have to say that I admire Democratic candidate (and current congressman) Stephen Lynch for one thing: his vote against the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.

Lynch opposes the law because it failed to include a public option, a government-run insurance plan that may have been a desirable and affordable option for many people, while including something that harms individuals and benefits only insurance companies, the individual mandate that everyone purchase health insurance. At a recent debate he said, “What the insurance companies wanted, they wanted 31 million new customers. We gave them everything they wanted. It was like a hostage situation where we not only paid the ransom, but we let the insurance companies keep the hostages.”

Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe wrote an excellent column on the subject, in which he explains as follows:

He was the sole member of the Massachusetts delegation to oppose the bill, and he did so in the face of personal entreaties by President Obama, by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and even by the widow of Senator Ted Kennedy, who had died just a few months earlier. He did so even though it angered many of his labor-union allies, and despite the president’s enormous popularity in Massachusetts. In the end Lynch was one of just 34 Democrats in Congress – and the only one in New England – to vote no.

Before long he was facing a serious re-election challenge within his own party, the first since he was elected to the House a decade earlier. (The Boston Globe, which had warned Lynch against making “a grievous error” by voting no on ObamaCare, endorsed his opponent in the Democratic primary that fall.) Now, as Lynch and fellow Representative Ed Markey – who says passing the health law was “one of the most important votes of my career” – compete for their party’s nomination in the Senate race, that 2010 vote is back in the spotlight.

What do you call it when a congressman opposes a bill it would be far easier to support, infuriating much of his political base and putting his electoral prospects at risk? Richard Kirsch, a key strategist for the progressive coalition that spent $47 million to get ObamaCare passed, has been calling it “cowardice.” I do not think that word means what he thinks it means.

I agree wholeheartedly. Many people may disagree with Lynch’s position, but only someone who doesn’t understand English could call it cowardice. Taking an unpopular position that results in criticism and puts you at odds with your friends, allies, constituents, the media, the public, the leaders of your party, the President of the United States, and the grieving widow of a widely loved and admired senator is the very opposite of cowardice. No matter what you think of ObamaCare, you have to admit that Lynch’s vote was courageous.

CVS recently unveiled a new policy requiring all employees who use the company’s health insurance plan to undergo a medical screening by May 1 of this year, which includes having their height, weight, and blood pressure measured by a doctor, as well as blood tests for glucose and cholesterol, or else be penalized $50 a month. Employees must sign a statement certifying that the screening is “voluntary,” and the results will be sent to WebMD Health Services Group, the company that implements CVS’s benefit programs.

This policy has deservedly faced criticism from privacy rights organizations. Dr. Deborah Peel, the founder of Patient Privacy Rights, called the policy “incredibly coercive and invasive.”

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Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office ruled that cities and towns cannot enact bans on medical marijuana dispensaries, as several were attempting to do. Although the decision made it clear that cities and towns can enact zoning restrictions on the locations of dispensaries, complete city-wide bans are not OK. The decision was a response to Wakefield’s Article 11. It was authored by Margaret J. Hurley, Director of the Municipal Law Unit of the AG’s office:

Our review of Article 11 presents the question whether a town meeting vote to completely ban medical marijuana treatment centers from town conflicts with state law. We find that such a ban would frustrate the purpose of Chapter 369 of the Acts of 2012, “An Act for the Humanitarian Medical Use of Marijuana” (enacted as Question 3 on the November 2012 state ballot), to allow qualifying patients, who have been diagnosed with a debilitating medical condition, reasonable access to medical marijuana treatment centers. The Act’s legislative purpose could not be served if a municipality could prohibit treatment centers within its borders, for if one municipality could do so, presumably all could do so. Because we find that such a total ban conflicts with the Act, we must disapprove Article 11 on that basis.

It’s hard to argue with that logic. If every city and town banned marijuana dispensaries, the right of Massachusetts citizens to use marijuana for medical purposes would, for all practical purposes, not exist. And if it is ruled OK for a city or town to ban dispensaries, there’s nothing to stop all cities and towns from doing so. In my opinion, this ruling is a victory for medical freedom.

Read the full decision here (PDF).

Source: WBUR

Justice Milton Tingling of New York’s State Supreme Court struck down Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on large sodas today, just a day before it was scheduled to go into effect. According to Reuters:

“It is arbitrary and capricious because it applies to some but not all food establishments in the city, it excludes other beverages that have significantly higher concentrations of sugar sweeteners and/or calories on suspect grounds, and the loopholes inherent in the rule … serve to gut the purpose of the rule,” he wrote.

He also expressed concern that to allow the health board such sweeping authority would “eviscerate” the separation of powers between the executive and the legislature branches of city government.

Agricultural economics professor Jayson Lusk wrote a great piece on the decision in the New York Daily News, saying among other things:

This schizophrenic paternalism results from an awkward attempt to walk a fine line between a liberal agenda that yields to, even celebrates, freedom of choice and expression when it comes to abortion, sex, speech and drugs — but stops far short when those same freedoms might benefit evil corporations.

It is an odd position that posits us so weak as to fall for anything offered by Ronald McDonald or Tony the Tiger yet so strong to know when to keep a baby alive or which truths to speak to power. A more consistent stance would concede to a better informed elite the power to shelter and protect us from all harm. Tell us what to eat, where to live, what jobs to work and to which gods to pray.

If we are intent on banning everything pleasurable that we want to enjoy time and again, you can also soon say goodbye to coffee, baseball and sex.

If that strikes you as an appalling prospect, here is another consistent stance: Don’t interfere with others’ choices. Sure, mistakes will be made, and we may occasionally be taken by hucksters. Yet a citizenry empowered to make their own choices will take matters more seriously if they know there’s no one else to blame. And, truly, at the end of the day, there isn’t.

Medical marijuana is now legal in Massachusetts… but that hasn’t stopped local governments from banning it in their cities and towns. For example, in January, the Malden City Council voted to restrict medical marijuana dispensaries and vending machines to industrial areas of the city, banning them from residential or commercial areas. Melrose went further, with its Board of Aldermen voting unanimously, with no discussion, to ban dispensaries entirely. Both Reading and Wakefield held special town meetings in November, where they voted to ban dispensaries as well. Wellesley and Westborough are considering doing the same. In Needham, the board of selectmen voted unanimously to ban both dispensaries and cultivation in private homes. (The Town Meeting will vote on the ban in May.) Numerous towns, including Hingham, Scituate, Quincy, Burlington, Woburn, and Cambridge, are considering temporary medical marijuana moratoriums.

The legality of these bans is up for debate, with the state Attorney General’s office yet to weigh in.

In Lynn, the City Council passed a zoning ordnance prohibiting marijuana dispensaries from being located in the waterfront area or within 1000 feet of a school, park, or residential dwelling unit. For all practical purposes, this means dispensaries would be completely banned in the city. However, Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy vetoed the proposed law. “I believe that such an outright prohibition would be found to be unconstitutional,” she said. “But even if these restrictions were to pass constitutional muster, I suggest that they fly in the face of the expressed preferences of the voters.”

I agree with her. People have a right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes, a right recognized by the voters of Massachusetts when they approved Question 3 in November. This law allows up to 35 marijuana dispensaries to be opened in 2013, with at least one in each of the state’s 14 counties. But if every city and town banned dispensaries, then there would be no dispensaries anywhere, completely violating the intent of the law that voters approved. In my opinion, cities and towns should respect the rights of their citizens to use marijuana for medical purposes. Deliberately making it more inconvenient to exercise a right  - for example, by forcing people to travel long distances – diminishes the meaning and significance of that right. Instead of banning medical marijuana, more local governments should follow the courageous example of Mayor Kennedy of Lynn.

In the latest in a long line of policies that restrict liberty and violate individual rights in the name of safety and health, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently decided to ban public hospital emergency rooms from writing prescriptions for more than three days of pain medications. Long-acting pain medications such as OxyContin, Fentanyl, and methadone will not be prescribed by emergency rooms at all. Plus, emergency rooms will not be allowed to refill lost or stolen prescriptions.

Critics of the new policy point out that many people with painful conditions are unable to get an appointment with their primary doctor within three days, leaving them without pain relief in the intervening time period. Dr. Alex Rosenau, president-elect of the American College of Emergency Physicians, pointed out that people with hand injuries, for example, are unable to have surgery until their swelling goes away, which can take more than three days. And those who are poor and/or without health insurance may not have a primary doctor at all, leaving them with no way of obtaining pain relief.

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After the sad and frustrating defeat of Question 2 in Massachusetts, it is interesting to look at the assisted suicide laws of other countries. An example of this is the case of Belgian twins who were granted the right to die after becoming both deaf and blind:

Identical Belgian twin brothers, born deaf, becoming blind and unable to bear not being able to see and hear each other, had their wish to die granted in a case testing the boundaries of legal euthanasia.

Doctors gave the 45-year-old twins lethal injections after they had had a cup of coffee together and said goodbye to each other, a spokesman at the UZ Brussel hospital said on Monday.

“It’s not simply that they were deaf and blind that they were granted the right to euthanasia. It is that they could no longer bear being unable to hear or see the other,” he said.

What happened to the twins is heartbreaking. But I am glad that they were allowed the freedom to choose how and when to end their lives, as opposed to being forced to live against their will. I hope that Massachusetts and the rest of the U.S. will one day move in the direction of Belgium and grant people dignity and full control over their own lives.