Politics

Will the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment End Obamacare? Tea Party Leader Chris Littleton on Mandates, Markets, and Occupy Wall Street

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"If you're going to take away liberty and property, there has to be some sort of due process involved," says Chris Littleton, the head of Ohioans for Healthcare Freedom and a Tea Party leader in the Buckeye state. "In this case, as citizens, we feel that those things are fundamentally inhibited and we want the Supreme Court to hear our case on this."

Littleton's group is pushing an upcoming ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to prevent citizens' involuntary participation in any health-insurance system. The U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to issue a ruling on the constituationality of what's known as the "individual mandate" in Obamacare and Littelton thinks passage of the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment will give his state unique legal standing: "This is citizen-initiated, which is very unique. If it passes, Ohio will be the only state that's done something like that." While most challenges to the individual mandate revolve around the limits of Congress' commerce clause powers, Littleton believes the amendment will activate due process and 10th Amendment considerations.

Littleton sat down with Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie to discuss the Healthcare Freedom Amendment and the similarities between the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party. "I sympathize with the Occupy people…They're sensing that the system is broken," explains Littleton. "But it seems their answer to things is the confiscation of wealth…where [the Tea Party] advocates for legitimate and true free market systems rather than what we have right now."

For more on the constitutionality of the individual mandate, watch Reason.tv's  "Wheat, Weed, and Obamacare," which U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson cited earlier this year in his ruling striking down the Affordable Care Act. 

For more on Chris Littleton and his work with the Ohio Tea Party, watch Reason.tv's "The Tea Party vs. John Boehner."

Approximately 5 minutes.

Produced by Jim Epstein; additional camera, Joshua Swain.

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