Letter From Carl Gatto

Dear Friends,

The recently-enacted federal health care “reform” is an unprecedented expansion of federal power and trampling of constitutional rights under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Accordingly, I sponsored HB 423, the “Alaska Health Freedom Act,” to better position Alaska to challenge this federal overreach in the Courts. If Congress can use the Commerce Clause to force you to buy one private good, they can use it to force you to buy any private good. Such suffocating government control of our lives is offensive to the American spirit and in violation of individual rights, laid out in Article 1 Section 1 of our state constitution, to the “enjoyment of the rewards of their own industry.”

Many of you have contacted me in support of HB 423 and I know many are following its progress closely. The federal health care law passed very late in our legislative session. In fact, because the session was so far along I had to request that the House Judiciary Committee offer the Alaska Health Freedom Act on my behalf, because at the time the federal bill passed individual legislators were no longer allowed to sponsor new legislation, but committees could. There was insufficient time for HB 423 to make its way to the House floor, work through the committee process on the Senate side, pass the Senate, and be signed by the Governor before the Session ended. I want to affirm my commitment to winning passage for the Alaska Health Freedom Act in the next session. It is important that we articulate a distinctly Alaskan, anti-mandate policy. Regardless of the Attorney General’s actions or the success or failure of other health care bills, I have pre-filed the same bill for next session. My intention is for the Alaska Health Freedom Act to be given the designation “HB 1” in the 2011-2012 Legislature and to win speedy passage from all the House Committees it has already passed. I will fight for this bill, and I ask you to fight with me. We must convince my colleagues in the State House and the State Senate that Alaskans not only oppose the federal health care mandate, we refuse to accept it.

Sincerely,
Representative Carl Gatto