Just as healthcare consumers are beginning to see and like the benefits of the healthcare reform act, Republicans have launched yet another attack designed to disable the gains achieved by PPACA.\u00a0 Earlier this week, US Senators Lindsay Graham [R-SC] and John Barasso [R-WY] introduced The State Health Care Choice act, which Slate<\/a> describes as being…<\/p>\n written to allow states to opt out of the individual mandate, the employer mandate, expansion of Medicaid programs and “new federal requirements for regulating health insurance.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Try this: Substitute “the Emancipation Proclamation,” “The Voting Rights Act of 1965,””the Interstate Highway System,” and “Social Security” for the last 18 words of that quote. How does that sound?<\/p>\n It seems clear that, knowing they don’t have the votes for a blanket repeal the Senate, and not being sure of how the courts will ultimately rule, Republicans are seeking a way to gut healthcare reform through the back door,\u00a0 by asserting the age-old states’ rights ploy. Even casual students of US history know how well the states’-rights argument has worked for the American public: slavery, separate and unequal education, inequities in state-administered Medicaid programs, abortion rights. When states go their own ways, where a citizen lives becomes the determining factor in fairness, equality and access to services. And when states decide for themselves that they don’t have to comply with Federal law, what’s left?<\/p>\n