Missing in the entire health care debate (and most others) is that any nationalized healthcare system is somewhere between partly to entirely unconstitutional *at the federal level*.   It does not mean that individual states cannot come up with creative ways of improving healthcare quality and affordability within their boundaries.

When Social Security first came about, it was clearly unconstitutional, but judges caved to the prevailing winds rather than doing their jobs.   It seems they rationalized the answer that the public wanted, rather than being lynched by angry mobs.  They failed to protect the individual.

On the other hand, states should be able to do most anything they please.  After all, people can move to another state if they find that their state’s policies are too intrusive.   And they can far more easily vote their politicians out of office.   These personal insurance plans are not available at the national level.

But I’ve heard no one use the “do whatever you want IN YOUR STATE” argument to combat the idea of ObamaCare.   Not at the congressional level, not even in the broad public discourse.    Aside from thefact that national healthcare is not warranted by the Constitution, it would allow 50 different experiments to occur with the best of these being adopted by other states.   Not all healthcare reform plans are bad, as I lay out in my MRSA idea.

In order to be a Republican, you must wield states’ rights as a primary weapon against national socialism.    Let California be Cuba if they like.  Allow Montana to become a libertarian paradise if they like.   Permit Kansas to be an overtly  moral and religious state if they like.    Hell, even support Bernie Sanders’ right to form a commune and live in a teepee and share beans around a fire.  With guitars.  Gotta have guitars on a commune.

Even if it were disingenuous, the argument that having 50 different experiments at the state level *before* picking a national healthcare plan would have merit to all but the extreme left who want communal utopian heaven to arrive tomorrow like so many cultists awaiting a UFO to land or the end of the world to show up.   There are reasonable people that feel we should do *something*.  After all, if we don’t, nobody will be able to afford health care of any kind in 10-20 years.   And that’s an increasingly grim reality.

So I say to Republicans, if you have no plan that you support, you must support states’ rights to do as they wish.   Otherwise, we’re going to be stuck with the Healthcare of Dr No in the future.